Everything Amazon Changed in 2026, in One List

Individually each of these was an announcement you may have skimmed. Together they add up to a different platform than the one most catalogues were built for.

Dates are effective dates. Sources are at the bottom — check them rather than taking our word for any of it.

January

15 January — FBA fees rose. An average of about $0.08 per unit, weighted harder against low-price items; small standard units under $10 saw roughly $0.12. If your margin model predates this, it is wrong.

1 January — Amazon ended its internal FBA prep service. More reliance on third-party prep.

February

8 February — prepaid return labels, no exemption. The high-value exemption was removed. All seller-fulfilled returns now issue an Amazon label and the shipping cost sits with the seller regardless of item price.

12 February — reviews stopped pooling across differing variations. Rolling through May. Variations that differ in functionality, performance, formulation or intended use no longer share reviews. Colourways generally still do. Child ASINs that were coasting on a parent's history are on their own.

16 February — SAFE-T window halved. Sixty days to thirty, for claims on damaged, lost or wrongly returned items. A monthly returns process is now structurally too slow.

February — return processing fees expanded to apparel and footwear. The two highest-return categories on the platform.

28 February — targeted OTDR deactivation. Specific high-volume listings are suspended rather than the whole account being frozen. Better, and much easier to miss.

March

4 March — Business Solutions Agreement update. Automation tools must self-identify, include kill switches and comply with data restrictions. Relevant if you run repricers, inventory tools or ad automation.

1 March — removal and disposal fees charged per unit processed rather than on order completion. A cash-flow timing change.

July

27 July — titles capped at 75 characters. Including spaces, every category except Media. Amazon has said it will replace non-compliant titles with its own generated versions, with a review window for brand owners. This is the biggest single change of the year for anyone who writes listings.

From July — Featured Offer eligibility gate being removed. Rollout targeted through end of year. More offers enter consideration on a given listing.

30 July — New Selection programme. For new-to-FBA products: referral fees capped at 10% on the first 100 units and 5% on the next 100, $50 coupon credits, $75 Vine credits, 120 days free storage and returns on the first 200 units.

8 July — CPSC certificate eFiling for most covered imports, filed electronically with CBP.

August

Item highlights launched. A separate, searchable field of up to 125 characters, sitting alongside the shortened title. Both are indexed.

Supplement third-party testing widened to the whole category. cGMP certification by an approved TIC provider, submitted by the certifier rather than by you, phased seller by seller with roughly 90 days from contact. What it involves.

Still ahead

30 September — 90% Business Hour Delivery Rate required on seller-fulfilled Amazon Business shipments, with enforcement possible from 30 October.

15 October 2026 to 14 January 2027 — Q4 peak fulfilment fees. Roughly $0.32 per unit above standard, plus the existing 3.5% surcharge. Holiday deal fees of $100 upfront plus 1.5% of promotional sales, capped at $5,000.

The pattern underneath

Three of these removed a shortcut.

The title cap removed the ability to win visibility by carrying more keywords than a rival. The review-pooling change removed the ability to launch a variant on credibility it had not earned. The Featured Offer change removed a gate that was keeping competitors out of the comparison.

Four more made avoidable costs more expensive: returns bill you more, recovery is shorter, fees are up, and peak is coming.

Put together, 2026 has been a year of Amazon removing ways to succeed without a good listing, while raising the price of a bad one.

The shortest possible action list

1. Any title over 75 characters — rewrite it before Amazon does.
2. Item highlights empty — fill it. That is 125 indexed characters going unused.
3. Check which variants still pool reviews — then look at what the ones that lost their history need from the gallery.
4. Weekly Account Health check — targeted deactivation is quiet.
5. Weekly returns processing — 30 days is not long.
6. Pull your return reason codes — and fix the top cause before 15 October.

Numbers one and two take an afternoon for most catalogues and are the highest-return work available right now.