Spain's mandatory B2B e-invoicing: the rules are set, the clock has not started

Corrected 9 September 2026. This item originally reported, on secondary sourcing, that the mandate would apply “by late 2026”. The primary source does not support that date. The regulation has been read directly and the item rewritten below.

Real Decreto 238/2026, de 25 de marzo (BOE-A-2026-7295) was published on 31 March 2026 and entered into force on 20 April 2026. It is the long-delayed reglamento developing the business-to-business electronic invoicing mandate created by Ley 18/2022, de 28 de septiembre, “Crea y Crece”, and it inserts a new Article 8 bis into the invoicing regulation, Real Decreto 1619/2012.

Article 8 bis makes electronic invoicing obligatory where the recipient of the transaction is a business or professional whose seat of economic activity, permanent establishment or habitual residence is in Spain. Simplified invoices are excluded, apart from those covered by Article 7.2.

The obligation is not yet enforceable on anyone. Under disposición final cuarta, effective application is deferred and the deadlines run from the entry into force of a ministerial order developing the public e-invoicing platform that the Agencia Estatal de Administración Tributaria has been tasked with building. From that order:

• twelve months for businesses whose turnover exceeded 8 million euros in the previous calendar year
• twenty-four months for every other business and professional, which is where Spain’s autónom@s sit

For individuals and income-attribution entities, the Agencia Tributaria states that the obligation to report invoice status becomes enforceable only once thirty-six months have passed since the order came into force.

That order has not been published. The draft went to public consultation on 16 and 17 April 2026, the consultation closed on 3 June, and as at 9 September the final text has still not appeared in the BOE. The draft sets its own entry into force at 1 October 2026, which would put the large-business phase at 1 October 2027 and everyone else at 1 October 2028 — but those dates come from a draft, not from the gazette, and this reglamento was already three and a half years late.

Worth separating from Verifactu, which is constantly conflated with it: Verifactu has firm dates in published law. Mandatory B2B e-invoicing has no date at all until that order appears.

What can be said with certainty is the floor: the order cannot predate the regulation it is made under, so the mandate cannot reach autónom@s before spring 2028 at the very earliest.

One distinction worth holding onto, because it is constantly blurred: this is a separate regime from Verifactu. Verifactu governs the integrity of the billing record. Article 8 bis governs the format and transmission of the invoice itself. A business can be inside one and outside the other.