Euro 7 and brake particulate: what changes on 29 November 2026

If you make pads, discs, drums or friction materials, you have sixty-six days. From 29 November 2026 a new type of passenger car or light commercial vehicle does not get its type-approval if the particulate emitted by the brakes exceeds the limit, and the test that measures it changed yesterday: the dyno data sitting in your archive was produced against a text that the Union has just replaced.

The dates in Article 21

Euro 7, Regulation (EU) 2024/1257 of the European Parliament and of the Council, staggers application across several dates. Article 21 provides that it applies “from 29 November 2026 for new types of vehicles of categories M1 and N1 and components, systems and separate technical units intended for vehicles of categories M1 or N1”, and from 29 November 2027 to new vehicles; for M2, M3, N2, N3 and for O3 and O4 trailers the two dates are 29 May 2028 and 29 May 2029.

Two articles turn the first date into a prohibition. Article 10(4): from that date, faced with a new M1 or N1 type that does not comply with the Regulation, approval authorities shall “refuse to grant EU emission type-approval or national emission type-approval”. Article 11(1) is the one about you: from the same date Member States shall prohibit “the sale or installation of a system, component or separate technical unit intended to be fitted on a vehicle of category M1 or N1” that is approved under Euro 7 while the part itself is not. And Article 4(4) lists brake systems among the components that must meet Annex I under the conditions of Annex III.

The limit already exists. The second stage is an empty table

The Regulation defines particulate matter as “any material emitted from the tailpipe or the brakes and collected on a filter media”: braking falls inside the same definition as the exhaust. The entry to look for is Annex I, Table 4, “Euro 7 brake particle emission limits in standard driving cycle applying until 31 December 2029 […]”. For M1 and N1, excluding N1 Class III, “Brake particle emissions (PM10)” are set at 3 mg/km for pure electric vehicles (PEV) and 7 mg/km for plug-in hybrids, non-off-vehicle-charging hybrids, fuel-cell vehicles and internal combustion vehicles; for N1 Class III, 5 and 11 mg/km.

Tables 5, 6, 7 and 8 — the second stage from 1 January 2030, and the heavy-duty categories — carry empty cells, for PM10 and for particle number alike. Article 18(5) commits the Commission to a report by 31 December 2027, ahead of the delegated acts that will fill them in. Anyone designing a friction material today for 2030 is designing against a blank table.

What Delegated Regulation 2026/1214 actually did

Today’s consolidated text, 02024R1257-20260923, carries only two amendment markers, ►M1 and ►M2, and no ►C: no corrigendum. Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/1216 of the Commission, of 9 June 2026 (OJ L 1216 of 13.8.2026), sets the durability multiplier for pollutant gases at 1,2 for heavy-duty M3, N2 and N3 over the additional lifetime. (EU) 2026/1214 (OJ L 1214 of 3.9.2026), in force since 23 September, replaces Table 4 of Annex III in full.

What it replaces is a single line, and that single line decides what happens on your own test stand. Before: “Testing according to the UN Global Technical Regulation No 24 on brake emissions”. Now: “Testing in accordance with UN Regulation No 179 on the Laboratory Measurement of Brake Emissions for Light-Duty Vehicles”. This is not an updated cross-reference: it moves from a global technical regulation, which is a method, to a UN Regulation under the 1958 Agreement, which is a type-approval instrument. Recital 2 justifies it by “further harmonisation and improvement of the testing environment; high-precision measurement of PM10, PM2,5 and particle numbers; testing of new technologies such as brakes equipped with passive or active emission-reduction filters […]”, and by the data collected when testing ‘Euro 7’ brakes.

Where it hits you: the emissions family

UN Regulation No 179, in the Official Journal of 18 May 2026, groups brakes into brake corner emissions families: only vehicles “that feature an identical brake assembly with respect to the characteristics listed in (a)-(d)” belong to the same one, and the third characteristic is yours — “Type of friction material: pad (friction surface size and shape, friction material formulation […])”. And the friction material identification code contains “an identification number that relates uniquely to the friction material formulation”. A change of formulation, decided for cost reasons or in order to replace a substance, is not a process variant: it is a different family.

The replacement market is inside the perimeter: the categorisation covers “Original” and “Original Replacement” brakes, and the test has to be run in pairs — “Original and original replacement brake parts (discs, pads, drums, shoes) shall be tested on the test stand coupled with the corresponding original brake part”. To test your replacement disc you need somebody else’s original pad. In Annex V to Euro 7, Table 11, the brake system emissions test in the WLTP brake cycle is mandatory both for type-approval and for conformity of production.

How many part numbers do you carry in your catalogue today, and for how many of them could you say, in one afternoon, which family they fall into?

Why a closed system

A friction material formulation is the trade secret of a manufacturing business and lives in one system; the dyno results live in another; the type-approval files and the technical service reports in a third; the replacement part numbers in a fourth. None of the four talks to the others, and none of the four can be uploaded to a model outside your perimeter.

Then comes something company archives almost never do: rebuilding the file as at the date of the test, against the conditions in force on that day. A test closed in July stands against UN Global Technical Regulation No 24; one closed today stands against UN Regulation No 179. It is the problem of which text you read, and on what date, and it comes back in every supply chain that has to prove something downstream, as with end-of-life vehicles. And when the test conditions change — it happened yesterday — the useful question is not a legal one: it is which part numbers and which approvals fall under the new reading, and the answer is needed in one afternoon.

What we do not know

UN Regulation No 179 as published in the Official Journal gives its date of entry into force as “XX September 2026 (TBC)” and refers, for its status, to UNECE document TRANS/WP.29/343, which was not reachable from our network (error 403): the effective date is not one we have confirmed ourselves. We have not verified which of the implementing acts foreseen by Article 14 have already been adopted for M1 and N1. For M2, M3, N2 and N3 the cell in Table 4 of Annex III is still empty: for heavy-duty brakes there is no test method yet.

The two axes, applied

Complying. The cross-reference in Annex III becomes a control that runs over your own systems: every part number tied to its formulation, to its family, to the dyno report with its date and to the test conditions in force on that day, with an alert when a legal cross-reference changes or a formulation is modified without anyone reopening the file. An exportable, dated dossier, ready for the approval authority or for the lead customer.

Deciding. The same platform holds laboratory, PLM, quality, the type-approval office and the parts catalogue together in a single operating model, on which AI agents carry out decisions with an operator in command: which families to retest first, which part numbers to withdraw, which customers to warn before they think to ask. For large manufacturers, defence, public administration and healthcare. Always in two modes: on-premise, on standalone machines that need no deep integration into your network, or a dedicated cloud with a dedicated VPN and a data centre in Italy, with shared management throughout.

The first session, at no cost, produces a dated map of your friction part numbers: which formulation, which family, which test, against which text. It stays with you. Talk it through with one of our engineers.