Verifactu Deadline Moved to 2027: What Changed

The Verifactu deadline history: from 2023 to 2027

Verifactu is the working name for Spain’s Sistemas Informaticos de Facturacion (SIF) mandate, the legal requirement that invoicing software meet certified standards of integrity, traceability, and inalterability, with a QR code on every invoice that lets the recipient verify it directly with the tax agency, AEAT. The framework was set by Real Decreto 1007/2023, implementing anti-fraud invoicing obligations already written into Ley 11/2021. That original decree did not fix the specific compliance dates most businesses actually plan around; those came later, and they have now moved twice.

The first fixed deadline arrived with Real Decreto 254/2025, which set 1 January 2026 for companies taxed under Impuesto sobre Sociedades and 1 July 2026 for autonomos and other IRPF-taxed businesses and professionals. For most of 2025, that was the number every accountant, software vendor and advisory site quoted, and it was correct at the time.

It did not hold. Real Decreto-ley 15/2025, in force since 4 December 2025, pushed both dates back a further twelve months. The current deadlines are 1 January 2027 for Impuesto sobre Sociedades taxpayers and 1 July 2027 for autonomos and other IRPF-taxed businesses and professionals covered by article 3.1. This is confirmed directly on AEAT’s own Verifactu FAQ page, last updated 22 July 2026, not on a third-party summary of the rule.

Why this matters beyond pedantry: a business that budgeted a compliance project around the original 2026 dates now has an extra year it did not expect, useful breathing room if the work has not started yet. But it is also a trap for anyone who assumed the first delay was the final word and stopped tracking the file. The deadline has already moved twice in two years. Treat 1 January 2027 and 1 July 2027 as the current best information, not as permanently fixed, and revisit this page or AEAT’s FAQ periodically rather than filing the date away and forgetting it.

Why most sites still say the deadline is in 2026

Part of this is ordinary content rot: a page written and published in mid-2025, when 1 January and 1 July 2026 genuinely were the correct dates, that nobody has revisited since. That content was accurate when it went live. It stopped being accurate on 4 December 2025, when Real Decreto-ley 15/2025 took effect, and a large share of it has simply never been updated to reflect the change.

Software vendors compound the problem in a specific way. Accounting and invoicing platforms ran marketing campaigns through 2025 built around getting ready for January 2026, and some of that copy is still live on pricing pages and blog posts, because updating marketing collateral tends to rank lower on the priority list than updating the product itself. The result is a strange split: the underlying software may already be Verifactu-certified and ready for either deadline, while the marketing page selling it still quotes a date that no longer applies.

There is also a genuine, if smaller, group of advisory pages that get the sequence backwards, treating the December 2025 delay as if it were the original date and the April 2025 decree as some kind of later clarification. The safest check for any page you read on this topic, including this one, is whether it names both decrees, Real Decreto 254/2025 and Real Decreto-ley 15/2025, in the right order. A page that only ever mentions one decree is more likely to be working from outdated information.

None of this is a reason to distrust every source. It is a reason to check the date on anything you read about Verifactu deadlines, and to treat a 1 January 2026 or 1 July 2026 date, stated without qualification, as a signal the page has not been revisited since late 2025.

What businesses should actually do before 2027

The extra year is genuine relief for anyone who had not started. It is not, however, a reason to set the file aside until late 2026. AEAT and most software vendors are treating 2026 as a voluntary testing window: certified updates are rolling out through the year, and adopting one early lets you resolve invoice numbering, QR-code generation, and integration with your accounting or ERP system before your actual deadline arrives, rather than during the scramble everyone who waited will be having.

Four things worth doing now, in roughly this order.

For a Spanish company with a foreign owner, this is one line item inside a broader compliance picture that also includes IVA and corporate tax filings, payroll if you employ staff, and general bookkeeping. Our Corporate Services in Spain guide covers how those pieces fit together under one Malaga office, so your Verifactu setup is not handled in isolation from the rest of your filings.

Veri*Factu or non-Veri*Factu: the modality choice, briefly

AEAT built a genuine choice into the system rather than a single fixed format. Under the Veri*Factu modality, your software transmits a structured summary of each invoice to AEAT in real time as it is issued, and AEAT pre-validates the record as it is created. That meaningfully lowers your own audit burden later, since the tax authority already holds a real-time copy it trusts. Under the non-Veri*Factu modality, records are kept locally to the same integrity, traceability and inalterability standard, but nothing is transmitted live, which shifts a heavier self-certification and internal-audit burden onto the business.

Most small and mid-sized foreign-owned companies benefit from Veri*Factu specifically because it reduces the audit-defense workload down the line. A business with robust internal controls already, or specific software constraints that make real-time transmission impractical, may reasonably choose the non-verifiable path, but should budget more compliance overhead for it. This is a decision your software provider or ERP vendor needs configured correctly too, not just a legal preference stated on paper, and it is exactly what our Verifactu review covers before your software gets touched.

Penalties for non-compliance are worth naming plainly rather than glossing over. Advisory firms tracking the reform commonly cite article 201 bis of the General Tax Law: roughly 50,000 EUR per fiscal year for a business using non-compliant software, and roughly 150,000 EUR per fiscal year per system type plus 1,000 EUR per uncertified unit sold, for the software producers and distributors themselves. We treat these figures as directionally correct and confirm the current numbers as part of any compliance review, since enforcement guidance can be refined between now and 2027.

If you are setting up a new Spanish entity alongside your Verifactu preparation rather than retrofitting an existing one, our full Verifactu guide covers the SIF requirements end to end, including our setup fee from 490 EUR, and Company Formation in Spain starts from 600 EUR; see our fixed-price packages for bundled options.

Verifactu is not the same rule as mandatory B2B e-invoicing

One more source of confusion worth clearing up while the deadlines are on your desk: Verifactu and mandatory business-to-business e-invoicing are two separate legal regimes, not two names for the same thing, and a growing amount of 2026 content mixes them together. Verifactu, under Real Decreto 1007/2023, governs the technical integrity of the software that creates and logs your invoices, both B2B and B2C, and exists to combat tax fraud. Mandatory B2B e-invoicing, under article 12 of Ley 18/2022 (the Crea y Crece law), governs the structured electronic format businesses and autonomos must use when sending invoices to each other, so that systems can process and validate them automatically rather than a person reading a PDF.

What makes 2026 an easy year to get the two confused is that their compliance dates now broadly line up. Companies and self-employed obligados under the B2B e-invoicing mandate are working to the same reference dates as Verifactu, 1 January 2027 for larger companies and sociedades, 1 July 2027 for autonomos and the remaining obligated businesses, both tied to the technical regulation timeline under RD-ley 15/2025. Two different rules, two different things your business has to do, one shared set of dates to plan around.

None of this changes what you owe today. It simply means that when you audit your invoicing software against 2027, ask about both standards in the same conversation, not just the one that happens to carry the more familiar name.