Scotland Tobacco Sale Notice Rules Change in 2026
If you run a shop in Scotland, or you are trying to make sense of a dense piece of public health law, this new Scottish Statutory Instrument is mostly about notices. According to legislation.gov.uk, the regulations were made on 30 September 2026, laid before the Scottish Parliament on 2 October 2026, and they begin in two stages: 27 November 2026 and 1 January 2027. That timing matters. This is not a full rewrite of tobacco law in Scotland. It is a set of amendments that tidy older rules, change the size and wording requirements for some notices, and make sure Scottish regulations match the newer Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026.
The first set of changes starts on 27 November 2026. From that date, the rules for banning order notices will change. These are the notices that have to be displayed in retail premises when a banning order has been made for those premises under the Tobacco and Primary Medical Services (Scotland) Act 2010. The notice itself is getting larger. The required dimensions move from 297 millimetres by 420 millimetres to 420 millimetres by 594 millimetres. The lettering rules are also being tightened so the heading must be at least 18 millimetres high and the rest of the statement must be at least 10 millimetres high.
There is also a small legal change that helps make the rule clearer. The regulations add a definition of the word "character", meaning a letter or number. That may sound minor, but it removes doubt about what exactly must meet the minimum size rules. What this means in practice is simple. If a retailer has to display one of these banning order notices from 27 November 2026 onwards, the larger format applies. The explanatory note says that reaches all such notices from that date, including notices linked to tobacco and vaping product banning orders made before 29 October 2026.
The second date to hold on to is 1 January 2027. From then, any premises where a tobacco business is carried on must display a notice carrying this statement: "It is illegal to sell tobacco products to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009". This is the clearest public-facing part of the change. If you are explaining the law to staff, pupils or customers, the sign now points people to a specific birth date rather than relying on older, more general wording. That makes the rule easier to spot and easier to teach.
The overall size of that shop warning notice is not changing. That point is easy to miss in the legal wording, so it is worth saying plainly: the notice stays the same size. What does change is the text-size rule inside the 2011 regulations. Regulation 3 replaces "36" with "21", so the required size of the statement text is being reduced to fit the updated wording. In other words, the message changes on 1 January 2027, but the notice board itself does not need a new set of dimensions.
Another amendment, also starting on 27 November 2026, is more technical. It changes the heading of regulation 7 in the 2011 rules on moveable structures and fixed penalty notices by removing the words "all other". On its own, that looks tiny. In legal terms, though, it is part of a tidy-up. The reason is that the Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026 repealed two offences: a person under 18 purchasing tobacco products, and a person under 18 failing to comply with a confiscation request. Because those offences are being removed, the related fixed-penalty rules have to be cleaned up too, so there are no prescribed penalties left behind for offences that no longer exist.
The explanatory material also notes that one of the powers used to make these regulations was switched on for regulation-making from 29 April 2026, even though it comes into force for other purposes on 29 October 2026. That helps explain why ministers could make these amendments in advance of some wider changes taking effect. Signed by Maree Todd on behalf of the Scottish Ministers at St Andrew's House in Edinburgh, this instrument is a good example of how law often changes in small but important steps. If you want the short version, remember it by date: 27 November 2026 brings bigger banning-order notices and some legal housekeeping, while 1 January 2027 brings the new tobacco sale warning text for shops across Scotland.