A pack is a fixed surface. Every brand has the same few square centimetres to win a shopper's attention, and over the next few years regulation and industry standards will ask for more of that space than ever before.
There is no single law about QR codes on packaging. Instead, a few separate changes are converging on the same surface. In the EU, the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, which has applied since August 2026 and covers all packaging placed on the EU market, whatever its origin, brings in new labels to help consumers sort packaging correctly, and digital codes such as QR codes can carry some of the information it requires. Separately, the retail industry, coordinated by GS1, has set a goal for point-of-sale systems to read 2D barcodes, often QR codes, alongside the traditional barcode by the end of 2027.
The detail is still moving. The detailed formats for the EU's new labels were due to be set in August 2026, and the Commission is still preparing them. In the UK, mandatory recycling labelling has not been brought in under the producer-pays packaging scheme (extended producer responsibility), and current government guidance on the scheme contains no labelling requirement. Treat any firm date with caution. But the direction is clear: more information on the same pack, in formats set by regulators rather than by anyone thinking about how shoppers look.
That's the part I think the industry is underestimating. Attention is finite, and every element on a pack takes a share of it. A QR code is a high-contrast black and white block, which is exactly the kind of shape the visual system is tuned to notice, so it can pull the eye away from the brand and the message doing the real work. A recycling mark or a line of small print is quieter, but it still takes space and still adds to the load. Treated as compliance, these elements tend to be added last, in whatever room is left. That is how packs end up cluttered.
For brands, the answer is to treat compliance as design. That means three things. Test the pack with the mandated elements in place, not before they are added. Check that the brand and key message still stand out, and how the pack performs beside its competitors on shelf, because they all face the same constraints. And, with label formats still being settled, test a range of placements now, so a team has evidence-backed options when the rules do.
Retailers have a stake too. Own-label packs face the same requirements as brands, so the whole shelf will carry more small print, and shoppers will find it harder to navigate unless someone is thinking about the shelf as a whole. The move to 2D barcodes at the till is a genuine step forward for data and traceability. It should not come at the cost of a shelf that is harder to read.
Then there are the shoppers. A QR code on a pack asks for two things: that someone notices it, and that they trust it enough to scan. The first is an attention problem. The second depends on whether the pack feels credible. A code nobody sees does nothing, and a code that looks like clutter can undermine the pack around it. If a code is going to be there, it should have a clear reason to be scanned.
Legislation will decide what has to be on the pack. It will not decide whether anything on it gets seen. That remains a design question, and the brands that answer it well will answer it with evidence rather than opinion. At Dragonfly AI, we decode what shoppers will actually see on a pack, in context, before it goes to print. As the rules change what packs have to carry, that matters more than ever.