XRechnung Versions Below 3.0 Removed from Peppol on 1 August 2026
OpenPeppol has marked all XRechnung profiles up to and including version 2.1 as "Removed" from the Peppol network as of 1 August 2026. Businesses still sending or receiving these legacy formats need to migrate to XRechnung 3.0.
A quiet but practically important cleanup took effect in Germany's e-invoicing infrastructure on 1 August 2026: all XRechnung profiles up to and including version 2.1 were changed to "Removed" status in the OpenPeppol eDEC Code Lists, meaning they can no longer be validly sent or received over the Peppol network.
What Changed
Peppol maintains a code list of valid document type profiles. Older XRechnung versions had already been marked "deprecated" — a warning stage — for some time. As of 1 August 2026, versions up to and including XRechnung 2.1 moved from deprecated to fully removed. Peppol access points are expected to reject transmissions using these retired profiles.
XRechnung 2.2 and 2.3 are not affected by this particular cutoff: OpenPeppol has stated their removal will happen only after the new EN 16931 standard version is formally published, and not before 2027.
Why the Timing
The removal dates were deliberately staggered to give implementing systems — accounting software, ERPs, Peppol access points — enough lead time to adjust without a hard, single cutover across every version at once.
Practical Impact
This mostly affects legacy integrations that have not been updated in some time. Since XRechnung 3.0 has been the current version for German B2G e-invoicing for a while, most actively maintained accounting and ERP software should already be sending 3.0-formatted invoices — this change primarily catches stragglers still running old integrations or custom-built XRechnung generators that were never upgraded.
What to Check Now
- Confirm your software is generating XRechnung 3.0 (or later), not an older profile — check with your vendor if unsure
- If you built a custom XRechnung integration rather than using off-the-shelf software, verify it references the current profile identifiers, not a hardcoded 2.x schema reference
- Watch for XRechnung 4.0, expected in the second half of 2026 following the EN 16931-1:2026 standard update — see our [EN 16931 2026 update explainer](/news/en-16931-2026-update-xrechnung-4-zugferd-25-explained) for what's coming next
Source
XStandards Einkauf, Deprecated XRechnung Versionen; OpenPeppol, eDEC Code Lists Change Log.
