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Guide

Price Marking Order changes from April 2026

Changes to how UK retailers must display prices take effect on 6 April 2026. Here is what is changing, who it applies to, and what it means for the way you manage your shelf edge.

Checked against the government guidance published 22 September 2025.

This guide is general information for retailers and is not legal advice. Check the government guidance and take your own advice before making compliance decisions.

It is not a new Price Marking Order

The law is still the Price Marking Order 2004. What changes in April 2026 is a set of amendments to it, made by the Price Marking (Amendment) Order 2024. Those amendments were originally due to come into force on 1 October 2025; the Price Marking (Amendment) Order 2025 replaced that date with 6 April 2026, which is the date to plan around. The government published updated guidance on the Order in September 2025 to reflect the changes.

Selling price and unit price are different obligations

These two requirements are often treated as one thing, and the distinction matters more after April 2026.

  • The selling price is the final price to be paid for the product or a given quantity of it, including VAT and other taxes.
  • The unit price is the price expressed per standard measure — per item, kilogram, litre, metre, square metre or cubic metre — so a shopper can compare products sold in different pack sizes.

A product can require both. Where a unit price is required, it has to be shown as well as the selling price, not instead of it.

Units are being standardised

The 2024 Order removes the provisions and schedule that specified which units applied to particular products. Unit pricing is instead expressed in the standard measures above, so the same category is priced consistently regardless of pack size — goods sold by weight per kilogram, goods sold by volume per litre, and so on. In practice this reduces the number of special cases you have to track, but it also means some products that were previously priced in a different unit will change.

Products offered at more than one price

A new article 7A deals with the situation where the same product is available at different prices to different shoppers — loyalty or member pricing being the obvious example. Where that applies, each selling price and each unit price has to be indicated, together with an indication that a particular price depends on conditions being met. Those conditions have to be displayed prominently, unambiguously, legibly and close to the product.

The guidance gives the straightforward case: if members pay £1 and everyone else pays £2, both prices and both unit prices have to be shown, along with the condition attached to the lower one.

Reduced prices

Where a product is sold at a reduced price, the amended article 9 requires the reduced selling price and the reduced unit price to be shown. The guidance acknowledges that re-pricing individual items is not always practicable for a large-scale or short-lived reduction, and expects the reduced unit price to be shown where it is reasonably practicable to do so.

Exemptions

Unit pricing does not apply everywhere. The main exemptions described in the guidance include:

  • Small shops. A small shop is one with a relevant floor area not exceeding 280 square metres, excluding areas not used for retail or display. Certain products sold in a small shop — pre-packaged products in constant quantities, and bread made in prescribed quantities — are exempt from unit pricing, as they are for itinerant traders and vending machines.
  • Products reduced because of damage or deterioration.
  • Assorted items sold together, where the items differ in weight, volume, price or quantity when sold individually.
  • Cases where the unit price would be the same as the selling price, or would round to zero pence.
  • Aural advertisements, and television or cinema advertising.

Exemptions are narrower than they look. Being under 280 square metres does not exempt a shop from price marking generally — it affects specific unit-pricing obligations for specific products, and products sold from bulk are treated differently. Read the guidance against your own range rather than assuming a whole-store exemption.

Who enforces it

Local authority trading standards services enforce the Order, and breaches can carry a fine under the Prices Act 1974. Separately, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act gives the Competition and Markets Authority and others civil enforcement routes with substantially larger financial penalties.

What this means for your shelf edge

The practical burden of these changes is not the rules themselves — it is keeping the shelf edge consistent with them across a whole range, every time a price or promotion changes. More tickets have to carry a unit price, promotional and member prices have to appear together with their conditions, and reductions have to be reflected at the shelf.

Digital shelf pricing can help with the mechanics of that. Because every label is generated from the same product data and the same ticket layout, a change to a price or a unit-price rule is applied the same way across the range rather than depending on who printed which ticket. That supports a more consistent and quicker price-management process.

It does not make you compliant. Whether a given product needs a unit price, what that unit price should be, and how your conditions are worded remain your decisions, based on your own reading of the Order and your own advice. No pricing system can make that judgement for you.

Sources

Managing the shelf edge

If keeping unit pricing consistent across a large range is the part that worries you, electronic shelf labels change how that work is done — and you can estimate what it would cost before speaking to anyone.

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