The EU's fragrance allergen list just tripled, and if you sell cosmetics or skincare in small bottles, it’s something you need to be aware of. As of 31 July 2026, the number of fragrance allergens you might need to declare on an EU cosmetic label has jumped from 26 to more than 80. Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/1545 added 56 more after the EU's Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety concluded they could cause allergic reactions. If your product was already on the EU market before that date, you can generally keep selling it until 31 July 2028. Anything newly placed after the deadline has to comply from day one. That said, the new allergens don't automatically appear on every label. You only need to declare them when their concentration in the finished product exceeds 0.001% in a leave-on product or 0.01% in a rinse-off product. If you use a synthetic fragrance blend, you'll need to check it against the longer list. Your fragrance supplier can tell you what's in the blend, but you'll need a safety assessor to work out whether each allergen exceeds the threshold in your finished product. Things are a little trickier if your product contains essential oils. A single essential oil is a complex natural mixture that can contain dozens of individual compounds, and many of those compounds might now be on the allergen list. If you use lavender oil in a serum, for example, you still list the oil as an ingredient, but you may also need to declare several listed fragrance allergens that occur naturally within it. And this is where the packaging headache starts. A 10ml or 30ml dropper bottle doesn't give you much label space to begin with, but now that you might have to add a dozen more allergen names to your ingredients list, there’s a good chance you’ll be struggling for space. Your options for fixing it are limited, too. You can shrink the text (but that might make it illegible), you can redesign the label, switch to something like a peel-and-reveal label, or use an enclosed leaflet (the EU rules do allow a separate leaflet, tag or card where it's impracticable to fit everything on the packaging itself). Having said all that, if you sell only in England, Scotland or Wales, you're still on the old rules, which buys you a little time. The UK Cosmetics Regulation still uses the original 26-allergen list, and the government hasn't formally adopted the EU's expanded list . . . yet. Northern Ireland is a different story. It follows the EU cosmetics framework, so the new rules already apply there. Nobody knows exactly when Great Britain will follow, but British trade bodies like the CTPA are already telling brands to prepare anyway. In the end, it doesn't matter much whether you sell in the EU, Great Britain, or both. If you sell any volume into the EU—even just a handful of units through a marketplace—the EU rule already applies to you. And if you only sell in Britain, you've got a window to get ahead of a change that's widely expected. So no, you don't need to panic. But you do need to look at your labels. If your current bottle was sized for a shorter ingredient list, now is the time to check. Better that than failing an upcoming compliance review. What Can You Check Now? Two things are worth doing regardless of where you sell today. First, check whether any of your products reach the EU market, directly or through a reseller. If they do, the July 2026 deadline already applies to you. Second, if your product contains essential oils or other natural fragrance sources, don't assume your current label can fit the longer allergen list. Get your ingredients checked against Annex III by a compliance specialist before you commit to another packaging run.
