The first European DPP standards are out and a textile pilot has opened to suppliers. Here is what is confirmed, what is not, and what a supplier can prepare.
The Digital Product Passport (DPP) is a digital record that goes with a product and can be read by scanning a data carrier such as a QR code. It comes from the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), and each product group gets its own rules through a delegated act. For textiles, those rules are not in force yet. This article covers what is confirmed in 2026, and corrects several claims in the earlier version, including a 2028 textile date and findings from pilots that I could not confirm.
| Item | Status | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| First DPP technical standards | CEN and CENELEC published six standards on 27 May 2026: EN 18216 (data exchange protocols), EN 18219 (unique identifiers), EN 18220 (data carriers), EN 18221 (data storage and persistence), EN 18222 (APIs for lifecycle management and search) and EN 18223 (system interoperability) | Technical summary |
| Legal effect of the standards | Not yet cited in the Official Journal, so they do not yet give a presumption of conformity with the ESPR | Technical summary |
| Access rights and security standard | FprEN 18239, covering access rights, security and confidentiality, was expected around September 2026 | Technical summary |
| Textile pilot | A DPP pilot on the EU-funded CIRPASS-2 platform, led by Plasafe, opened to textile and apparel suppliers in April 2026 | Trade press, April 2026 |
| Textile rules | A textile delegated act is still to come. The Commission's working plan gave an indicative date of 2027 for adoption | From my earlier research; check the Commission page |
The earlier version said the textile DPP is "targeted for 2028 application". I could not confirm a 2028 application date. Application follows the delegated act and a transition period, so the date depends on when the act is adopted. Treat any specific year as unconfirmed until it is published.
The earlier version reported "CIRPASS-2 interim findings" from mid-2026 showing that data quality falls with each supply chain tier. I could not find any published findings. The trade report I found says only that the textile pilot had just opened and reported no results. I also could not find an "European Partnership for Textile Sustainability", so I removed that reference.
The tier problem is still a reasonable expectation, and I state it as my own reasoning, not as a pilot result. Direct suppliers usually have better records than fibre producers or chemical makers further upstream, and a passport that needs data from every stage will meet gaps where those records do not exist. A brand may have to use estimated or default values for some inputs, which weakens traceability.
The data fields for textiles are not final. Product-specific rules are expected to cover items such as material composition, recycled content, chemical content, origin, care and repair information and end-of-life guidance. Treat this as a likely list, not a requirement, until the delegated act is published.
For batteries the picture is clearer: the EU Battery Regulation requires a battery passport from 18 February 2027 for certain battery categories. I take this from my own knowledge, so check the regulation before relying on it.
The earlier version called the EUDR a precursor for natural fibres. The EUDR covers cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soya and wood, and products made from them. Cotton is not one of the covered commodities. Cattle hides and leather were covered, but a delegated act adopted on 13 July 2026 removes hides, skins and leather from the scope (see the EUDR article for the commencement date). Application dates are 30 December 2026 for large and medium companies and 30 June 2027 for other micro and small enterprises. The EUDR does show how hard plot-level data collection is and how dates can slip, but it is not a textile rule.
Several software vendors offer traceability tools that may support DPPs, including Circularise, TextileGenesis and Oritain. I did not verify which of them take part in any pilot, and the ESPR does not name a platform. The new CEN and CENELEC standards are intended to make systems interoperable, which should reduce lock-in over time.
The textile passport rules are not final, so there is no compliance deadline to meet yet. What you can do now is organise the data any version is likely to need: fibre composition by batch, recycled content with certificates, chemical records, and a record of where each input came from.
Preparation steps
It is not fixed. It depends on adoption of a textile delegated act under the ESPR, which was indicatively expected in 2027, followed by a transition period. I could not confirm a 2028 date.
I found none. A CIRPASS-2 textile pilot opened to suppliers in April 2026 and had reported no results in the source I read.
No. It covers cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soya and wood and their products, and their products. Cattle hides and leather were covered, but a 2026 delegated act removes them; check its commencement date.
Yes. CEN and CENELEC published six on 27 May 2026, covering data exchange, identifiers, data carriers, storage, APIs and interoperability. They are not yet cited in the Official Journal.
CDX, First European Standards for the Digital Product Passport Published (29 May 2026). Ecotextile News, Digital Product Passport pilot opens to textile suppliers (20 April 2026). Arendt, EUDR simplification review published (18 May 2026). Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 (ESPR) and Commission working plan COM(2025) 187. The battery passport date is from my own knowledge. These are trade and law-firm summaries; confirm in the official text.
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