GS1 Sunrise 2027: What 2D Codes on Packaging Mean for Your Line

There is a version of the Sunrise 2027 story circulating that says barcodes are being replaced in 2027, and that anything without a QR code will not scan.

That version is wrong, and acting on it is expensive in two opposite directions: either you panic and rebuild a working packaging spec, or you dismiss the whole thing and get caught when your retail customers start asking for 2D.

Here is what actually changes — and the part of it that lands on your coding line rather than on your artwork.

What Sunrise 2027 actually commits, and to whom

GS1, the neutral standards organisation behind the barcodes on retail packaging, has set an industry goal: by the end of 2027, retail point-of-sale systems globally should be able to read and process the product identifier — the GTIN — from a two-dimensional code as well as from a traditional linear one.

Notice who the commitment sits with. It is a readiness target for retail scanning infrastructure: the imagers and the software at the checkout. It is not a date on which your current EAN or UPC symbol stops being valid, and it is not a legal mandate in itself.

Your linear barcode does not stop working

GS1’s own guidance describes linear barcodes coexisting with 2D ones for as long as there are uses for them, and describes a transition phase of dual marking: keep the linear barcode and add the 2D code alongside it.

The reason is practical rather than nostalgic. Not every retailer upgrades on the same day, and not every checkout in every market will be image-capable at the same moment. For as long as a pack might meet a scanner that only reads linear, the pack has to carry the linear symbol. After the sunrise date, the expectation is that scanners increasingly accept both — not that one replaces the other overnight.

So the question for a manufacturer is not “when do I remove my barcode” but “when do I add a second code, and what has to change on my line to print it well”.

A marketing QR code is not a Sunrise code

Putting any QR code on a pack does not make it compliant, and it does not make it scannable at a till.

The 2D carriers that matter at retail are a QR Code carrying a GS1 Digital Link URI, a Data Matrix carrying a GS1 Digital Link URI, and GS1 DataMatrix. In every case the code has to carry the GTIN, structured to GS1 syntax. A QR code that simply opens your website is a marketing device; it will not identify a product through a checkout, and a shopper scanning it gets a landing page rather than product data.

This is worth saying plainly because it is the most common way a packaging project goes wrong: the artwork is updated with a QR code, everyone declares the job done, and nobody checks whether the code carries the GTIN in the required syntax.

The part that lands on your line: variable data

Here the distinction between static and variable data matters far more than any printer specification.

A static 2D code carries fixed content — essentially the GTIN and optionally a URL. It does not change from item to item, so it can be printed with the packaging artwork in the same pass as everything else on the pack.

The value that retailers and GS1 are actually chasing comes from variable data: the batch or lot number, the expiry or best-before date, and in some applications a serial number. Those change continuously, which means they cannot be printed with the artwork. They have to be applied to the pack at production speed, by a coder, on the line.

That is the point where Sunrise 2027 stops being a graphics project and becomes a coding project. It is also the part where the existing date and batch coding on most lines is already doing similar work — see date and batch coding for how that side of it is put together.

Print quality is a number, and it is measured

Unlike an unregulated campaign QR code, a GS1 2D code is expected to meet a minimum print quality grade of 1.5 under ISO/IEC 15415. The equivalent standard for linear symbols is ISO/IEC 15416. Verification grades a printed code across several parameters and produces a result on a 0 to 4 scale.

What that changes in practice is that “the code looks fine” is not evidence, and neither is “my phone can read it”. A phone camera and a retail checkout are different instruments, working at different speeds and distances, and a code that reads on screen can still fail at the till.

Parameter a verifier grades	What usually damages it	Where you control it
Symbol contrast	Ink too light for a dark or coloured substrate	Ink choice and substrate
Edge determination	Ink spread or dot gain softening the module edges	Ink, substrate and drying behaviour
Modulation	Density varying across the symbol	Print consistency and line speed
Quiet zone	Artwork or a neighbouring code crowding the symbol	Layout and placement

Two of those four are decided before the printer is ever chosen. That is the part people underestimate.

Substrate and ink decide more than the printer

A Data Matrix carrying a GTIN plus batch and date is compact and usually sits comfortably inside a single print width — on the cartridges we supply, print widths of 12.7 mm and 25.4 mm. A QR code carrying a full Digital Link URI is larger, and whether it fits within one print width or needs a wider one is a question that has to be tested on your line rather than read off a datasheet.

What decides whether that code grades well is the combination of surface and ink: how much the substrate absorbs or repels the ink, how far the ink spreads before it sets, and whether the finished code holds its contrast through the pack’s journey. On film, foil or coated board, the ink chemistry is doing most of the work, and how we match ink to material is the document to start from rather than any printhead specification.

Resolution also enters here, but not in the simple way it is usually presented. A higher nozzle pitch gives smaller, better-defined modules, which helps a compact symbol; what you actually need is a module size that the checkout imager can resolve at the distance it works from. We went through why the DPI figure on a datasheet is not a print outcome in DPI and resolution in thermal inkjet.

What to verify before you commit

Four questions, in this order, before anyone orders hardware:

1. Is the code built to GS1 syntax and does it carry the GTIN? If not, nothing else matters yet.
2. Is the data static or variable? Variable batch and expiry data has to be applied at the line, which is a coding decision, not an artwork decision.
3. Has anyone graded a printed sample with a verifier? Not read it with a phone — graded it, on the real substrate, at the real line speed.
4. Does the code survive the pack’s route? Condensation, abrasion, a wrap, a chill cabinet, a stretch film.

If the answer to the third is no, you do not yet know whether your line can do this. And if the answer to the first is no, the rest is decoration.

What we can and cannot help with

We make thermal inkjet cartridges and the inks that go in them. Two boundaries are worth stating, because they shape what an honest answer from us looks like.

We formulate and fill the ink, and we build the cartridge. The printhead inside the cartridge is one we qualify and buy, not one we manufacture. We do not build printers, and we do not sell barcode verifiers.

That means we cannot tell you your code will grade 1.5. What we can do is narrow the two variables that usually decide it: which ink your substrate actually needs, and whether a sample printed on your material holds its contrast and its module edges. Everything else — placement, imager capability, data syntax, the verifier’s own result — belongs to your packaging spec and your retail partners.

For the underlying choice of coding technology, thermal inkjet compared with continuous inkjet sets out where each one stops being the right answer. And if you want to see what we actually supply, start with the cartridge range.

What to send us

The useful things to send are: the substrate, with any coating or treatment noted; a sample of the real material; what the code has to contain, and whether any of it varies per item; the module size or symbol size you are working to; the line speed; and what happens to the pack after printing.

If you already have a printed sample that failed verification, send that too — a failed sample tells us more in one photograph than a specification does in a page. Otherwise send us the details and we will come back with what we would test, and what we would expect to be the deciding variable.