EU Battery Regulation: Does the Capacity Label Hit Power Banks on 18 August 2026?

Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 replaces the old Batteries Directive 2006/66/EC and was published in the Official Journal on 17 August 2023 (EUR-Lex summary). Article 13 handles labelling, and it does so in stages spread across four years rather than on a single cut-off day.

The double deadline is not an interpretation, it is the wording. Batteries carry the label "from 18 August 2026 or 18 months after the date of entry into force of the implementing act referred to in paragraph 10, whichever is the latest" (Article 13, Regulation (EU) 2023/1542). Paragraph 2 repeats the construction for capacity, paragraph 3 for non-rechargeable cells.

The QR code deliberately breaks the pattern. Its date, 18 February 2027, comes straight out of paragraph 6 and is attached to no implementing act at all (SKNvonGEYSO). So there is a live possibility that the QR code becomes mandatory on your power bank before the printed label it is supposed to point at does.

Paragraph 10 instructs the Commission to set harmonised specifications for the label by implementing act: format, type size, margins, minimum area. Until that act is in force there is no template a manufacturer could check a design against, which is precisely why the regulation postpones its own deadline.

The Commission put the draft out for feedback on 15 December 2025, the comment window closed on 12 January 2026, and formal adoption was expected in the second quarter of 2026 (CIRS Group). Among other things the draft requires the label to cover at least 5 % of the largest printable surface, and it sets a priority order for markings when space runs out: QR code, separate collection symbol, heavy metal symbols, the "non-rechargeable" pictogram (Normachem on the WTO notification).

The arithmetic that follows is simple. For 18 August 2026 to be the later of the two dates, the implementing act would have had to enter into force by roughly mid-February 2025, nearly a year before it existed even as a draft. It did not. Even with adoption in the second quarter of 2026, the 18-month clock lands somewhere in the second half of 2027. No precise date can be derived until publication in the Official Journal, and anyone quoting one today is guessing.

One note on how solid this reading is: the European Commission's own batteries page still lists Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/606 on recycling efficiency for this regulation, and no adopted implementing act on labelling (European Commission). If adoption has happened in the meantime, that moves the end date further out, not closer. The logic of the double deadline is unchanged either way.

It does. A power bank is a portable battery in the regulation's sense: a sealed battery weighing 5 kg or less, not designed specifically for industrial use, and neither an electric vehicle, LMT nor SLI battery. Compliance guides for the EU market classify power banks accordingly and list capacity, chemistry, weight, place and date of manufacture and the QR code among their marking elements (Compliance Gate).

Annex VI Part A is what ends up on the label. The guide published by the Baden-Württemberg chambers of commerce summarises the catalogue as: manufacturer name and address, battery category and unique identifier (batch, serial or product number), place and date of manufacture, weight, capacity, chemical composition, hazardous substances and critical raw materials present, guidance on the suitable extinguishing agent, and the heavy metal symbols Pb and Cd where applicable (IHKs Baden-Württemberg).

Small cells get a release valve: where marking the battery itself is technically impossible, the information moves to the packaging or the accompanying documents. A power bank with a palm-sized case usually has room to spare. The draft's priority order exists because that is not always true.

Do not read a deferred deadline as "nothing applies". Three marks have been binding for a while, and they are the ones you can genuinely check at the point of sale:

• The crossed-out wheeled bin. Since 18 August 2025 every battery carries the separate collection symbol under Annex VI Part B. A unit with none at all is a warning sign. Where the power bank goes after that is covered in our piece on how to dispose of a power bank.

• CE marking, either on the product or, where that is not technically possible, on the packaging and accompanying documents.

• A capacity figure — but still under the old rules, in a format the manufacturer largely picks. That is exactly why the mAh number on the box and the watt-hours that actually leave the device can sit so far apart, worked through in converting mAh to Wh.

What arrives in 2027 goes beyond text on a case. From 18 February 2027 Article 11 on the removability of portable batteries also applies. The Commission revisited that file on 14 July 2026, adding six further exemptions by delegated act, among them wearables such as smartwatches and fitness trackers and electric toys (European Commission, 14 July 2026). That act enters into force 20 days after its publication in the Official Journal.

A standardised capacity label would be a bigger shift for the power bank market than it sounds. Capacity is the category's headline selling point, and it is still quoted in mAh, a unit that says nothing about usable energy without a voltage next to it. A harmonised label with a defined measurement basis would make model-to-model comparison meaningful for the first time.

Until then the picture stays as it is: plenty of rules in the pipeline, few of them biting yet. And this regulation is not the only front. What Germany is changing about battery take-back is covered in our piece on the BattDG return rules; the lead limits pulling cheap models off the market are in lead in power banks; and whether the USB-C mandate reaches power banks at all is answered in the USB-C mandate piece.

If you are buying a power bank in the next few months, look for the wheeled bin, the CE mark, and whether the manufacturer prints watt-hours alongside mAh. A brand that volunteers the Wh figure is better prepared for the coming label than its competitors, and you can do the maths immediately instead of estimating.

As of 7 August 2026. Every deadline and legal act here was checked against the sources linked above. The implementing act under Article 13(10) may have moved since publication; the Official Journal is what governs.