On September 7, 2026 the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care made the Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026 (Age of Sale Notices and Consequential Amendments) (England) Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/996), laid it before Parliament on September 9, 2026, and fixed its entry into force for January 1, 2027. Published on legislation.gov.uk, the instrument prescribes the exact dimensions of the point-of-sale age-of-sale notice that England tobacco retailers must display and rewrites the display and price-list rules to the new birthdate-based test.
The parent Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026 (c. 18, Royal Assent April 29, 2026) already makes it illegal from January 1, 2027 to sell tobacco to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009, replacing the old "aged 18 or over" threshold with a fixed birthdate. Section 5(1) of that Act requires retailers in England to display a notice carrying the statement in section 5(2). SI 2026/996 now fills in the format of that notice and aligns the older display and pricing regulations with the new test.
What size must the age-of-sale notice be?
Regulation 3 fixes the minimum size of the section 5 notice at 297 mm by 420 mm, the A3 sheet format. Regulation 4 requires the statement itself to be printed large enough that each character is at least 21 mm high. These dimensions apply to every England tobacco retailer's point-of-sale notice and are not optional: a notice below either minimum does not satisfy section 5(1) of the 2026 Act once the regulations take effect on January 1, 2027.
For bulk tobacconists, regulation 5(3) tightens the existing minimum in the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion (Display) (England) Regulations 2010 from 36 mm to 21 mm, so the statement height is now uniform across general retailers and specialist bulk tobacconists.
Who has to display the notice, and by when?
Every person selling tobacco products in England to which the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002 applies must display the notice. The duty sits on retailers, including convenience stores, specialist tobacconists and bulk tobacconists, and is enforced through the existing trading standards regime. The hard deadline is January 1, 2027, when both the notice requirement and the underlying birthdate age-of-sale rule come into force together.
The change is operational, not cosmetic. Staff must stop asking "are you 18?" and apply a date-of-birth test instead: sale is lawful only where the customer was born before January 1, 2009. Point-of-sale and age-verification systems that currently key off an 18-year age threshold need reconfiguration to the birthdate, and signage must be reprocured to the 297 mm by 420 mm format.
How do the display and price-list rules change?
Regulations 5 and 6 rewrite the conditions for the display and price-list exemptions so they track the new birthdate test rather than the old age. The table sets out the substitutions made by SI 2026/996.
| Provision | Old text | New text from January 1, 2027 |
|---|---|---|
| Display Regulations 2010, reg 4(1) (display to a third person) | "aged 18 or over" | "born before 1st January 2009" |
| Display Regulations 2010, reg 5(2)(b) (bulk tobacconist) | "under the age of 18" | "born on or after 1 January 2009" |
| Display Regulations 2010, reg 5(3) (bulk tobacconist statement height) | 36 mm | 21 mm |
| Display of Prices Regulations 2010, reg 7 (price lists on request) | "aged 18 or over"; "age" | "born before 1st January 2009"; "date of birth" |
Regulation 6 also replaces "is aged 18 or over" with "was born before 1st January 2009" in the price-list conditions, so a price list may be shown only to a customer born before January 1, 2009. The cumulative effect is that every England tobacco display and price-list rule now turns on the birthdate, not on a rolling 18-year age.
The SI's explanatory note records that no separate impact assessment was produced for this instrument, because no significant impact is foreseen beyond what the Act's own assessment already covered; the burden is signage procurement, staff training and POS logic.
For compliance leads, the value of catching this kind of delegated instrument the moment it is made and laid is that continuous, per-jurisdiction real-time monitoring surfaces the change before the in-force date; Obsidian tracks this file as the implementing layer beneath the January 1, 2027 smokefree-generation milestone.
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What to do before January 1, 2027
- Reprocure point-of-sale notices to 297 mm by 420 mm, with the statement set in characters at least 21 mm high, for every England premises.
- Update bulk-tobacconist notices from the 36 mm minimum to the new 21 mm minimum.
- Retrain counter staff on the birthdate test: sale is lawful only where the customer was born before January 1, 2009.
- Reconfigure POS and age-verification logic from an 18-year threshold to the January 1, 2009 birthdate before the January 1, 2027 deadline.
- Brief trading-standards and compliance teams that the display and price-list exemptions now turn on date of birth, not age.
