GS1 Sunrise 2027: 2D Barcodes at the Till and What They Change in Your Labels and Systems

The barcode on a product has not fundamentally changed since 1974. Lines, a GTIN, a price at the till. Everything else about the product - batch, expiry, origin, composition - lives somewhere else, in systems that do not know about each other.

That changes on a date already set: by 31 December 2027, point-of-sale systems should be capable of processing 2D barcodes. The initiative is called Sunrise 2027 and it is run by GS1, the organisation that issues the barcodes in the first place.

What Sunrise 2027 actually requires

By the end of 2027, retail POS systems should be able to read a 2D barcode - in practice a QR code carrying a GS1 Digital Link, or a GS1 DataMatrix - and extract the GTIN from it exactly as they extract it from a linear barcode today.

Two things are commonly misunderstood.

The linear barcode is not being retired. It keeps working after 2027. The transition period means dual marking, not replacement.

Scanners are not interchangeable. A laser scanner reads lines; a 2D code needs an imager, which is to say a camera. That is a hardware line item for every retailer, not just a software change.

Why this is not the QR code from your leaflet

A GS1 Digital Link is not an ordinary QR code pointing at a website. It is a structured record: a URI that contains the GTIN and, optionally, batch or lot number, expiry date and serial number.

The consequence is that one code serves two audiences. The till takes the GTIN from it and rings up the sale. The consumer scans it with a phone and gets composition, allergens, origin, care instructions, disposal instructions. Today that requires either two printed codes or sacrificing packaging surface.

What this opens up, and why retailers will ask for it before the deadline

• Expiry control at the till, at batch level. The system can refuse the sale of a specific expired batch rather than relying on somebody having walked the shelf.
• Recalls become precise. Instead of pulling an entire product line from every store, you pull one batch. The difference is measurable in money and in how long the crisis lasts.
• Automatic markdowns on short-dated stock, instead of manual labelling.
• Less print on the pack. Part of the mandatory information can be presented digitally.

For food and pharmaceutical retail this is not an improvement. It is the fix for a problem that costs money every month.

Where this hits you even if you think it does not

If you are a manufacturer or an importer, the transition is not a labelling design question.

Product master data. The GTIN has to be correct and unique. In practice you find products sharing a GTIN, internal codes used as if they were GTINs, and product variants with no code of their own. All of that passes today because the till only looks at the price. With a 2D code it becomes visible.

A link to production. If the code carries batch and expiry, those values have to exist at the moment the label is printed, from a system rather than from a spreadsheet someone fills in each morning. That means a connection between the packing line and whatever generates the label.

Print quality. A 2D code printed badly on flexible packaging does not scan. You need code quality verification on the actual packaging at the actual line speed, not on a sample from a desktop printer.

Traceability through the chain. If your warehouse system does not carry the batch through receipt, storage and dispatch, the data in the code has nothing behind it. The code will assert something your systems cannot confirm.

A realistic preparation sequence

1. GTIN audit. How many you have, how many are valid, whether any products share a code, whether every variant has its own. This is about a week of work and it reveals the size of everything else.
2. Decide what the code carries. GTIN only is easy and delivers little. GTIN plus batch and expiry is harder and delivers everything retailers actually want. This is a commercial decision, not a technical one.
3. Connect production and packing, if you chose the second option.
4. Print and verify on real packaging, with code quality measured.
5. Dual marking and testing against your customers' tills, because their readiness will vary.

For retailers: the scanner is not the only cost

Replacing scanners is the visible part. The invisible part is POS software that has to recognise a Digital Link record, extract the GTIN and, if you want any benefit from it, handle batch and expiry. Without that second half you have bought a new scanner that does what the old one did.

What this means if you are already looking at Digital Product Passports

If you follow the ecodesign rules and the Digital Product Passport, you will notice the two projects overlap. The passport also requires a data carrier on the product, and in practice that carrier is a 2D code. A company that introduces 2D codes for Sunrise 2027 and solves batch traceability along the way has largely built the technical foundation for the passport as well.

The reverse is also true: whoever treats the 2D code as a pure label swap will do the same work twice.

If you want this solved in time

APPARO builds exactly this layer: the system that connects product data, the batch coming out of production and label printing, so that the 2D code carries a value your systems can actually confirm. We have built automated declaration generation from supplier files through to print, so this is a natural continuation of the same work.

We start with a GTIN audit and an inventory of where batch and expiry are created today. That tells you whether this is a few weeks of work or a year.

Write to office@apparo.rs or book an intro call at apparo.rs/en/start-project.