Etsy's 2026 Policy Changes: What Sellers Need to Know

Etsy left its headline seller fees unchanged in 2026 and changed the edges instead. The four that matter: non-US sellers shipping to US buyers must now prepay import duties (from 9 July), regulatory operating fees rose sharply in several countries (from 22 June), real fur is banned with no vintage exemption (from 11 August), and the Seller Policy was rewritten (from 9 July). Nothing moved the 6.5% transaction fee, and plenty moved your margin.

That gap between "the fee did not go up" and "this year costs me more" is the whole story of selling on Etsy in 2026. Below is each change, what it actually does to a maker, and where it came from, so you can check any of it yourself.

What changed with US import duties on 9 July 2026?

This is the biggest margin event of the year for anyone outside the US who sells into it. Etsy now requires non-US sellers shipping to US buyers to use DDP - Delivered Duty Paid - which means the duty is calculated and paid at dispatch rather than collected from the buyer on delivery. In practice you are expected to build the duty into your price.

The teeth are in the consequences. Orders shipped without duties prepaid no longer qualify for Etsy Purchase Protection, and if a carrier bills the buyer for tariffs or collection fees, the buyer can be refunded and the charge deducted from you. Etsy sets out its position in its own guidance on evolving global tariff policies.

What it means for a maker: if you are in the UK, the EU, Canada, or anywhere else selling to American buyers, your landed cost per order went up and the liability for getting the paperwork wrong sits with you. Repricing your US-bound listings is not optional. Neither is understanding your product’s tariff classification, which for handmade goods is rarely obvious.

Which regulatory operating fees went up on 22 June 2026?

The regulatory operating fee is a percentage Etsy charges on each sale in specific countries, separate from the transaction fee, which Etsy attributes to the cost of meeting local tax and regulatory obligations. Several went up substantially, and two went down, as documented by Value Added Resource:

• France: 0.47% to 1.14%, more than double.
• Italy: 0.32% to 0.80%.
• United Kingdom: 0.32% to 0.48%, a 50% increase.
• Spain: 0.72% to 0.88%.
• Hungary: newly introduced at 1.97%.
• Türkiye: 2.27% down to 1.67%.
• India: 0.29% down to 0.05%.

These are small numbers that behave like large ones, because they stack on top of the listing fee, the transaction fee, payment processing, and any Offsite Ads charge. A French seller now pays close to a full extra percentage point on every order for a change that was never framed as a fee increase. Our 2026 marketplace fee comparison walks through how these layers combine across platforms.

What does the fur ban on 11 August 2026 cover?

Etsy’s Animal Products Policy prohibits products made from or containing natural fur taken from animals killed primarily for their pelts - mink, fox, rabbit and similar - including raw pelts, garments and accessories. The detail that catches people out is that there is no vintage exemption. Age and origin do not matter.

This lands hardest on vintage resellers and on upcycled-fashion makers who work with reclaimed materials, where a fur collar on a 1950s coat has always been treated as salvage rather than new demand. Byproduct materials are unaffected: leather, sheepskin, wool and mohair remain allowed, as does taxidermy. If you deal in vintage outerwear, audit your listings.

What is in the rewritten Seller Policy?

A new Seller Policy took effect on 9 July 2026. Reporting on the change describes it as largely reorganisation and clarification rather than new obligations, with expanded appeal options for eligible listing decisions and better explanations when a listing is removed or restricted. If you have ever had a listing deactivated with no usable reason attached, that last part is the meaningful bit.

What did not change is the requirement underneath it. Production partners must still be disclosed at both account and listing level, and that includes every print-on-demand service. Non-disclosure remains one of the most common causes of shop suspension. We cover how the disclosure system reads from a buyer’s side in what Etsy production labels really mean.

Where does Etsy stand on AI-generated work?

Clearer than most sellers realise, and more permissive. Etsy’s Creativity Standards place "seller-prompted AI art" inside the Designed by a seller category, alongside original designs sold as digital downloads or produced by a third party. AI-assisted work is allowed on Etsy. It simply is not supposed to sit under Made by a seller.

Whether that boundary is enforced consistently is a separate question, and it is the reason a lot of buyers no longer trust marketplace handmade labels at all. Our position is different and simpler: nothing on SCRAPD is AI-generated, and we explain why in why never AI-generated matters.

What about Offsite Ads and the listing fee?

Unchanged. Offsite Ads still charges 15% for shops under $10,000 in trailing-twelve-month sales, who may opt out, and 12% for shops at or above that threshold, who may not, capped at $100 per order. The $0.20 listing fee and the 6.5% transaction fee also stayed where they were, which is exactly why the year feels confusing: the numbers everyone watches did not move.

What happened at the company level?

A lot, and it explains the direction of travel. Kruti Patel Goyal became CEO on 1 January 2026, having previously run Depop. In February Etsy agreed to sell Depop to eBay, and the deal completed on 30 July 2026 after clearance in the UK, US, Germany and Australia. We wrote about the deal when it was announced in what eBay buying Depop means; it is now done rather than pending.

Etsy’s Q2 2026 filing for the quarter ended 30 June 2026 shows the shape of the business the sale leaves behind: active sellers up 5.9% to 5.7 million, active buyers down 0.4% to 87.0 million, and a take rate of 25.9%, up 130 basis points year on year. In the same week Etsy announced a restructuring cutting roughly 220 roles, about 12% of headcount.

Read those three numbers together and the strategy is legible. More sellers, slightly fewer buyers, and a rising take rate means each seller is competing with more sellers for a flat pool of buyers, while the platform captures more of each sale. That is the environment, not a complaint about it. We looked at the longer arc in why Etsy and Depop have gotten harder for genuine handmade sellers.

What should a maker actually do about all this?

1. Reprice anything you ship into the US from abroad. Work out the duty on your actual product classification and put it in the price. Do not absorb it and hope.
2. Recheck your effective fee rate. Add listing, transaction, processing, regulatory operating fee and any Offsite Ads charge together for your country. That combined number is what you are really paying.
3. Audit vintage listings for fur. No exemption means no exemption.
4. Confirm every production partner is disclosed. At account level and on each listing, print-on-demand included.
5. Do not put your whole business on one platform. The lesson of 2026 is that the terms can shift underneath you in five separate places while the headline number stays still.

The transaction fee did not move all year. The cost of selling did. Those are not the same measurement.

More coverage of the platforms makers depend on is in our marketplace news section, and if you are weighing your options, we keep an honest migration checklist for makers leaving Etsy that includes the reasons to stay.