July 2026: The EU "Goes Live with the Digital Product Passport“
- Thomas Rödding
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read
The Digital Product Passport (DPP) has long been a political project — a framework, a roadmap full of open variables. But as of today, the timeline is clear: in just six months, on July 19, 2026, the European Commission will launch the official DPP Registry.
New Logic For Market Access
What sounds like a bureaucratic milestone is actually a fundamental shift in the system.
In exactly six months, there will be a central, operational registry for Digital Product Passports. Not a pilot. Not a whitepaper. Not a draft. A live infrastructure.
But the real disruption lies elsewhere. The official EU documentation makes it unmistakably clear:
Once the DPP exists and is registered in the DPP Registry, the product can be placed on the market.
This is more than a statement. It introduces a new logic for market access. Registration will no longer be a formality — it will be a precondition for placing products on the market within applicable categories. The registry makes one thing visible: Does a product have a valid DPP and where is it stored?
What this means in practice
Product Passports Become Discoverable
Every affected product will receive a unique identifier — such as a product ID — and through this ID, the registry can answer one essential question:
“Yes, a Digital Product Passport exists for this product — and here’s where to find it.”
Market surveillance authorities and customs can then check:
Whether a product has a DPP
Whether it’s valid
And whether it is authorized for distribution
Product Passports Become Technically Verifiable
The registry doesn’t validate the content of a DPP, but it checks formal structure, authenticity, and integrity, including:
Formal criteria: Does a DPP exist, and is it correctly structured?
Authenticity & integrity: Was it created by an authorized entity? Has it been tampered with?
What’s often misunderstood:The registry does not store the full content of the product passport.
The DPP itself may be stored:
with the manufacturer
via a third-party service provider
or within a decentralized infrastructure
From Promises to Proof: What Changes in July 2026
Starting with the registry go-live, it’s no longer about what companies say —it’s about what their systems can prove.
Sustainability will finally move beyond declarations.
As of July 2026, the DPP stops being a concept and becomes a system. And systems don’t care about intentions. They either work — or they exclude.
The Shift Companies Must Prepare For
For companies, this means that the leeway they previously had to explain, report, or narrate sustainability is shrinking dramatically. It is no longer enough to say that you are preparing. From this point on, it will become clear whether products can be registered at all. Whether data is available consistently. Whether responsibilities have been clarified.
The real wake-up call is not a new obligation, but the commissioning of the infrastructure. From July 2026, it will no longer be promises that count, but infrastructure capability. And infrastructure capability means much more than just an existing data set: it includes role-based access along the value chain, interoperable data and identification standards, and the ability to keep product information up to date throughout the entire life cycle.
