The European Commission has published ten guidance documents to support CBAM implementation in the definitive period. DG TAXUD released the series on August 14, 2026 and hosts it on the CBAM legislation and guidance page. Four general guides explain the mechanism's concepts, the emissions calculation methods, and the free allocation adjustment, and six sector guides cover cement, hydrogen, fertilisers, iron and steel, aluminium, and electricity.
The Commission aims the series at "a range of stakeholders, with a particular focus on operators of installations outside the EU that produce CBAM goods, as well as authorised CBAM declarants and verifiers involved in the compliance cycle." The publication is the definitive-period successor to the transitional-period guidance, and Guidance No 4 delivers the first official walkthrough of the free allocation adjustment that determines how many certificates a declarant actually surrenders.
The full list of ten CBAM guidance documents
The series consists of four general guidance documents, numbered 1 to 4, and six sector-specific guides, numbered 5a to 5f, all published on August 14, 2026. The table below lists every document with the audience it serves most directly.
| Document | Title | Most useful for |
|---|---|---|
| Guidance No 1 | Introduction to CBAM concepts | Anyone new to the mechanism |
| Guidance No 2 | Quick guide for non-EU operators on CBAM implementation | Non-EU installation operators |
| Guidance No 3 | CBAM methods for the calculation of emissions embedded in goods | Operators and declarants |
| Guidance No 4 | CBAM calculation of the free allocation adjustment to the number of CBAM certificates to be surrendered | Authorised CBAM declarants |
| Guidance No 5a | Sector-specific guidance document on cement | Cement producers and their EU buyers |
| Guidance No 5b | Sector-specific guidance document on hydrogen | Hydrogen producers and their EU buyers |
| Guidance No 5c | Sector-specific guidance document on fertilisers | Fertiliser producers and their EU buyers |
| Guidance No 5d | Sector-specific guidance document on iron and steel | Steel producers and their EU buyers |
| Guidance No 5e | Sector-specific guidance document on aluminium | Aluminium producers and their EU buyers |
| Guidance No 5f | Sector-specific guidance document on electricity | Electricity producers and traders |
The six sector guides map one to one onto the six CBAM covered sectors. The series launches in English, and the Commission has announced versions in 11 further languages: Spanish, French, Arabic, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, and Turkish. That translation list signals who the primary reader is. The transitional-period guidance document for EU importers, published on May 30, 2024, appeared in the 24 EU languages, while this series is being translated for the languages of producer countries.
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Guidance No 4 explains the free allocation adjustment for the first time
Guidance No 4 is the first official document that walks through how the free allocation adjustment reduces the number of CBAM certificates a declarant must surrender. The adjustment mirrors the free allocation that EU producers still receive under the EU ETS. In 2026, free allocation stands at 97.5 percent, so the CBAM factor is 2.5 percent and certificates are due on only 2.5 percent of the verified embedded emissions of 2026 imports. The factor rises each year until free allocation is fully phased out on January 1, 2034.
Until August 14, declarants had to derive this calculation from the legal text of Regulation (EU) 2023/956, the Omnibus amendment (Regulation (EU) 2025/2083), and the CBAM implementing regulations. A dedicated guide matters because the adjustment sits between two numbers every declarant tracks: total verified embedded emissions and the certificate bill. With certificate sales opening on February 1, 2027 and the Q3 certificate price tracking an estimated six to eight euros above Q2, a correct adjustment calculation separates an accurate certificate budget from an overstated one.
What non-EU operators get from the sector guides
Non-EU installation operators now have sector-specific monitoring and calculation instructions for the emissions data they must hand to their EU importers for the 2026 reporting year. The operator files nothing with the EU; the importer declares. But the first declarations, due by September 30, 2027 and covering calendar year 2026, can only contain actual values if the installation monitored its production correctly throughout 2026. Guidance No 3 sets out the methods for calculating embedded emissions, and each sector guide applies those methods to the production routes of its own sector, from blast furnace steel to electrolytic aluminium.
Actual values are the biggest cost lever in the system. Importers that cannot obtain verified installation data fall back on CBAM default values, which carry mark-ups precisely to make actual data the cheaper route for most installations. The Commission's announcement puts it plainly: "Businesses need to ensure they are well prepared for the verification of their emissions data and have the right processes in place to report actual emissions."
Four steps let an operator act on the new guidance now:
- Download Guidance No 2, Guidance No 3, and the sector guide for your product from the Commission's legislation and guidance page.
- Check your current monitoring setup against the sector guide's methodology before the 2026 monitoring year closes.
- Agree the data format and delivery schedule with your EU customers, following the CBAM data requirements for exporters.
- Prepare the documentation trail a verifier will ask for, so the 2026 dataset is verifiable rather than merely recorded.
The commercial stakes behind those steps, from keeping EU market access to pricing carbon into contracts, are covered in the guide to CBAM for non-EU exporters, and the CBAM calculation guide shows worked examples for all six sectors.
The verifier accreditation guidance is still missing
The separate guidance document on accreditation and verification, announced for summer 2026, remains unpublished as of August 15, 2026. The Commission's CBAM verification page still carries the line "The guidance document on accreditation and verification will be published in summer 2026." The same page states that "the first CBAM verifiers are expected to receive CBAM accreditation around September 2026," which means no CBAM verifier holds accreditation today. Verifier registration in the CBAM registry opens on September 1, 2026, a date the Commission confirmed in late July.
The legislation and guidance page that now hosts the ten documents did receive one other recent update: the corrected default values Excel file went up there on August 10, and nearly every corrected value went down. The missing verifier guidance is the sharper gap. Operators now hold detailed instructions for producing verifiable data, while the verifiers who must check that data still lack both their guidance document and their accreditations.
What happens next
Three dates frame the rest of the first compliance cycle, and all three now have official guidance behind them except the verification step. The milestones are listed below.
- Around September 2026: the first CBAM verifiers are expected to receive accreditation, with registry registration opening September 1.
- February 1, 2027: certificate sales begin for authorised declarants.
- September 30, 2027: the first annual CBAM declarations are due, covering calendar year 2026.
The 2026 monitoring year is more than half over. The data an installation collects in the remaining four and a half months decides whether its EU customers declare verified actual values or marked-up defaults, and the ten new guidance documents are the Commission's most complete instructions yet for getting that data right.