New Cars Face Euro 7 Rules From 29 November With a £264 Price Rise

• Euro 7 rules take effect for any brand new car or van model launched from 29 November 2026, before applying to every new car sold from 29 November 2027, and the European Commission estimates the changes add about £264 to the price of a new car.
• For the first time, a single standard sets limits on particles thrown off by brakes and tyres, not just the exhaust pipe, and electric and hybrid cars must meet new battery health rules to protect their resale value.
• Emission and durability requirements now have to hold for 10 years or 200,000 kilometres, almost double the five years or 100,000 kilometres required under Euro 6.

A New Emissions Standard Arrives Just Before Christmas

Euro 7 is the next step up from Euro 6, the emissions standard every new petrol and diesel car sold in Britain has had to meet from 2014, and it starts to bite from 29 November 2026. From that date, any brand new car or van model being launched for the first time has to be certified to the new standard before it can go on sale. Existing models already in production get a grace period, but only until 29 November 2027, when every new car and van sold in a UK dealership, including models that were launched years earlier, has to comply. Manufacturers producing fewer than 10,000 vehicles a year, a category that covers several low volume and specialist brands, have until 2030 before the rules apply to them.

Buyers do not need to do anything to prepare for Euro 7, but the standard is expected to change what a new car costs and, to a smaller extent, how it is built. The European Commission’s own estimate puts the added cost of compliance at around £264 per car, a figure manufacturers are expected to pass on through list prices rather than absorb. That is a modest sum against the price of a typical new car, but it lands on top of every other cost increase already working through the market this year, from raw materials to the expensive car supplement on Vehicle Excise Duty.

What Is Actually Changing Under the Bonnet, and the Tyres

The single biggest change is that petrol and diesel cars now face the same nitrogen oxide limit, set at no more than 60 milligrams per kilometre, closing a gap that previously let diesel engines emit more NOx than petrol engines under lab conditions. Cars will also be tested in harsher real world conditions than before, including cold starts on short trips and ambient temperatures up to 45 degrees Celsius, the kind of heat a car sees on a hot UK summer day rather than in a climate controlled test cell.

Euro 7 is also the first standard in the regulation’s history to set limits on particles that come from somewhere other than the exhaust pipe. Brake dust and tyre wear, both significant sources of airborne particulate matter that have never been regulated before, now carry specific limits: 3 milligrams per kilometre for pure electric cars, which still wear brakes and tyres even without a combustion engine, and 7 milligrams per kilometre for hybrids, petrol and diesel cars. This closes a gap that had become harder to ignore as electric cars, which are typically heavier than equivalent petrol models, wear through tyres faster and send more rubber particles into the air and waterways.

Durability requirements have also roughly doubled. Under Euro 6, a car’s emissions control systems only had to stay within limits for five years or 100,000 kilometres, about 62,000 miles. Euro 7 extends that to 10 years or 200,000 kilometres, around 125,000 miles, which means manufacturers now have to design exhaust after treatment systems, catalytic converters and particulate filters to keep working properly for twice as long. New on board sensors are also required to flag faults that could push emissions above the legal limit before a driver would otherwise notice anything wrong.

What Changes for Electric Car Buyers

Euro 7 is not just a petrol and diesel story. For the first time, it sets minimum battery health requirements for electric and plug-in hybrid cars, aimed directly at a problem used EV buyers already worry about: how much range a battery will have left after several years of ownership. Under the new rules, a battery has to retain at least 80 percent of its original capacity after five years or 100,000 kilometres, and at least 72 percent after eight years or 160,000 kilometres. A car that fails to meet those figures would not be compliant with its type approval.

For anyone shopping for a new electric car from the end of November, this is a genuine consumer protection, not just an environmental rule. Battery degradation has been one of the biggest unknowns in the used EV market, with no consistent minimum standard that buyers could point to when negotiating a price or comparing one used model against another. Euro 7 gives that comparison a legal floor for the first time, and should make a battery health report a more reliable document when a car is eventually sold on.

What This Means for Anyone Buying a New Car Soon

Anyone ordering a completely new model, rather than a refreshed version of an existing one, from late November 2026 onward is buying a car built to the new rules, with the manufacturer’s compliance cost already somewhere in the price. Anyone buying an existing model between now and November 2027 is very unlikely to notice any difference at the point of sale. Those cars are still being built and sold under the Euro 6 framework until the final deadline arrives. Dealers have no requirement to tell a buyer which standard a specific car meets, so anyone who wants to know which rule applies to the car they are looking at should ask directly, especially for a model about to be replaced or significantly updated around the November 2026 or November 2027 dates.

The practical advice for most buyers is simple. The £264 average cost increase estimated by the European Commission is unlikely to be the deciding factor in any single purchase, and it will likely be absorbed into list prices gradually rather than appearing as a single visible jump on the day the rule changes. The bigger and more useful change for consumers is the new battery durability floor for electric and hybrid cars, which is worth asking about specifically when comparing any EV ordered or built from November 2026 onward, most of all for anyone planning to keep the car for five years or more, or to sell it on while there is still meaningful battery life left in it.

Van buyers and small fleet operators face the same timeline as private car buyers, with light commercial vehicles covered by the same November 2026 and November 2027 dates, and the same brake and tyre particle limits applying to vans used daily for deliveries and trade work. A trader replacing a van around the deadline would be wise to ask the dealer directly which standard the specific chassis on offer is built to. A van ordered just before the deadline and delivered just after it could arrive built to either standard, depending on when the model itself was type approved.

The Longer Road Ahead

Euro 7 is also a signal of how long petrol and diesel cars are expected to stay on UK roads. The government’s ban on new petrol and diesel car sales is due from 2030, but a car bought new and built to the final November 2027 Euro 7 deadline could realistically still be on the road into the 2040s. That is part of why the standard tightens durability requirements so heavily: regulators are planning for these cars to keep running, and keep polluting within their limits, for a lot longer than the five year window Euro 6 assumed. For now, the practical deadline for most readers is simply November 2026 for new model launches and November 2027 for every new car on sale, with the main financial impact landing as a modest, gradual rise in list prices rather than a single bill anyone will be handed directly.

Sources:

• Carwow: What is the Euro 7 emissions standard?
• Mann Island: New Euro 7 emission standards for new cars come into force in November
• Motoring Chronicle: Every New Car Buyer Could Get Bigger Discounts as Britain Misses Its EV Target