On July 22, 2026, China's State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA) published the 2026 edition of its Service Notice for the Technical Review of E-Cigarette Products, the application guidance every domestic and imported e-cigarette brand must follow to secure marketing authorization in mainland China. The updated notice refreshes the applicant conditions, required materials, and submission channels for technical review, and for the first time anchors the filing process in the newly issued E-cigarette Product Technical Review Implementation Rules (STMA Announcement No. 2 of 2026). The official STMA notice sets out the full procedure.
Technical review has been the gatekeeping step for the Chinese e-cigarette market since the regime took force in 2022: under Article 19 of the E-cigarette Management Measures, any e-cigarette product that has not passed review may not be marketed, and listed products must keep their filed information consistent. The 2026 edition does not create a new obligation so much as consolidate how filers satisfy the existing one, which matters because STMA has been tightening enforcement of the licensing and review pipeline through 2025 and 2026.
What changed in the 2026 edition?
The notice now cites three layered legal bases: Article 65 of the Implementing Regulation of the Tobacco Monopoly Law (State Council Decree No. 750), which brings e-cigarettes under the cigarette rules; the E-cigarette Management Measures (STMA Announcement No. 1 of 2022), in particular Articles 5, 7, 19 and 29; and the E-cigarette Product Technical Review Implementation Rules issued as STMA Announcement No. 2 of 2026. The third reference is the substantive update, because filers now operate under a dedicated implementation rule rather than only the generic 2022 measures.
Procedurally, the accepting authority remains the provincial tobacco monopoly administrative department, while the review itself is conducted by a professional body organized by the State Council tobacco monopoly department. The 2026 edition restates that domestic and imported products follow the same technical review track, while export-only products are handled separately through record-filing on the national unified e-cigarette trading platform.
Who must file, and through which channel?
Any brand owner seeking to sell e-cigarettes in mainland China must hold an e-cigarette production enterprise license as an authorized domestic-sale brand holder, be the trademark owner of the products applied for, and meet national industrial-policy requirements on capacity and production scale. The number of marketable specifications must also align with the unified trading platform's requirements. Foreign trademark owners may not file directly: they must appoint a domestic subsidiary or agent to submit to the provincial authority where that agent is located.
| Filing track | Platform | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Domestic-sale technical review | E-cigarette Technical Review Management System | Domestic and imported products sold in China |
| Export record-filing | National Unified E-cigarette Trading Platform | Export-only products |
What materials and product conditions does STMA require?
Applicants submit eleven categories of material through the management system: basic product information, the trademark registration certificate, packaging and exterior design drawings, the draft user manual, a product description report, a formula and raw materials report, a description of safety-critical production processes, inspection and test reports, a safety assessment or justification report, a commitment letter on the truthfulness of the filing, and any other relevant material.
On the product side, each item must comply with the Electronic Cigarette mandatory national standard (GB 41700-2022), use a trademark registered in China, and follow the rules on product naming, packaging labeling and health warnings. Where several items are sold in one pack, every pod and device in the combination must itself have passed technical review.
What does this mean for imported brands?
Article 29 of the 2022 Measures requires imported e-cigarettes sold in China to pass the same technical review and to use a China-registered trademark, and the 2026 edition reaffirms this. Importers should confirm that their domestic agent holds the production enterprise license, that the China-registered trademark matches the filed product, and that the inspection reports are accepted by the STMA review body, because inconsistency between a marketed product and its filed information remains a standalone violation under Article 19.
For compliance teams, the practical step is to map the new eleven-item material list against the last filing your company submitted, and to verify that the domestic agent's license and capacity position still satisfy the industrial-policy conditions STMA is enforcing this year. Continuous, per-jurisdiction monitoring surfaces guidance refreshes like this 2026 edition the moment STMA publishes them, so filings can be re-aligned before a product line is blocked at review.
Take advantage of this real-time watch
Next steps: confirm whether your current or planned China filings reference the new Implementation Rules (Announcement No. 2 of 2026); audit your eleven-item material pack against the 2026 edition; verify your domestic agent's license, capacity and trademark position; and brief your regulatory affairs and trade-marketing teams on the consistency duty under Article 19 before the next product launch.
