Packaging, CPG and private-label teams
How to get packaging ready for GS1 Sunrise 2027 with a Digital Link QR code
GS1 has asked every retail point-of-sale system to be able to read 2D barcodes by 31 December 2027. Pilots run in 48 countries and several major retailers are already live.
For a brand, the practical consequence is that a QR code carrying a GTIN needs something to answer it. That service is called a resolver, and it is the part most teams have never had to buy before.
- 1
Claim the GS1 company prefix you license
The prefix is globally unique in our system, so once claimed nobody else can register GTINs underneath it. Claims are self-asserted today — we do not yet verify them against GS1's own API, and we would rather say so than imply we do.
- 2
Register a GTIN and its link types
One GTIN carries many destinations keyed by GS1 vocabulary link types: product information, allergens, instructions, a recall notice, a reorder page. Add as many as the product needs.
- 3
Test all four request shapes before artwork
A plain scan should redirect to your default link. A link type request should redirect to that specific one. A linkset request should return every destination as JSON without redirecting. And the resolver description should be published for GS1 tooling to discover. Check all four while changing them is still free.
- 4
Print the dual barcode
GS1 recommends carrying both codes through the transition: your existing linear EAN or UPC stays on pack alongside the 2D code until point-of-sale coverage is high enough to drop it. Nothing you print today stops working.
- 5
Update destinations without touching the pack
The whole reason this is worth doing. When the recipe changes, the campaign ends or a recall notice is needed, you change the link — not the fifty thousand cartons already in the supply chain.
What this will not do
- GTIN is the only primary key supported. We do not resolve GLN, SSCC or GMN.
- Digital Product Passport is not implemented. If DPP is your requirement today, we are not the right vendor yet.
- Serving the resolver from your own domain rather than ours requires a custom domain, which sits on a higher plan than the resolver itself. Check the pricing page before you assume.
- Sunrise 2027 is an industry initiative, not a law. The pressure is commercial rather than statutory.
Tools used in this guide
Questions
Other guides
- How to put a QR code on a menu you can update without reprintingOne code on the table tent that opens lunch at eleven and dinner at five, without a second print run.
- How to A/B test a printed QR campaign and measure real conversionsSplit traffic from a single print run between two destinations, and match the sale back to the scan that caused it.
- How to send iPhone and Android users to different app stores from one QR codeOne square on the poster that opens the right store for whoever scanned it, decided at the moment of the scan.
- How to password-protect, expire, or scan-limit a QR codeFor codes on things that stop being valid: a door ticket, a limited run, a document that should not outlive its meeting.