The Shanghai Municipal Health Commission first announced in December 2025 that it would be implementing a pilot run of new health and warning labels for alcoholic beverages, ordering health commissions, health institutes, universities and other authorities to make the relevant changes and conduct public awareness campaigns accordingly, with the pilot now in full swing across the city.
“The guidelines for these alcohol warning labels are in line with the Shanghai National Nutrition Plan and Healthy Shanghai Action Plan, both running from 2019-2030,” the commission said via formal documentation.
“This will cover all alcoholic beverages with alcohol content above 0.5% by volume, and all sellers must strictly follow these guidelines when setting up the warning labels.”
The commission recently reinforced some of the stricter requirements that have been laid out, including the need for signage to be ‘eye-catching’ and the specific height and location of where the signage must be placed.
“For physical locations selling alcohol, the height of the signage must be roughly the same as eye level — so if posting on a wall or similar location, the bottom edge of the signage is expected to be at least 120cm from the ground,” the guidelines stated.
“At least one sign should be set up at each of the following locations: Cashier, order counter, alcoholic beverage shelves, open freezer area, closed refrigerator area, vending machine area, promotional area and so on.”
This means that all premises selling alcohol will not be able to get away with a single notice on the menu or counter, as the objective of these guidelines is for warnings to be as prompt and effective as possible for consumers.
Given the rising amount of alcohol purchases being conducted online, the commission has laid out specific requirements for online sellers in addition to offline ones.
“For online sales, electronic signage must be placed in prominent locations such as electronic menus for alcoholic beverages, main sales pages, and product introduction pages,” the commission added.
“At least one sign must be placed in a prominent position on each of these locations, and the minimum font size of the signage must not be smaller than the font size of the product branding on the same page. It should also be clearly visible to people with normal vision.”
Large and obvious
For physical locations selling alcohol, it has also been specified that the signage must be at lease 210mm by 70mm for horizontal signs, and at least 210mm by 300mm for vertical signs.
“Any changes to the size of this signage must still be scaled proportionally, so the ratios must still follow reference width-to-length ratios of 3:1 for horizontal labels and 0.7:1 for vertical labels,” the guidelines stated.
“All physical locations selling alcohol will need to make space for these signs, including large or medium supermarkets, convenience stores, catering establishments, entertainment venues, vending machines, and all other offline alcoholic beverage sales locations.”
For all sales locations, the labels will also need to meet some compositional requirements to be considered legally acceptable.
Shanghai alcohol warning label requirements:
- The overall shape must be rectangular
- The label must include a warning symbol:
- The warning symbol should be triangular in shape, contain the shape of a wine bottle, and clearly indicate ‘Alcohol content > 0.5% vol’
- The warning text font must be in ‘Source Han Sans 思源黑体’
- The overall size ratio of this label should be 1:1
- The label must include both lines of warning text as below:
- “Drink in moderation and avoid excessive drinking, as excessive drinking is harmful to your health”
- “Minors, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers should not drink alcohol”
- The main colours allowed are red (CMYK reference color: C4 M94 Y95 K0; RGB reference color: R 240 G37 B23 ) and black (CMYK reference color: C93 M88 Y89 K80; RGB reference color: R 0 G 0 B0)
In order to completely avoid the possibility of warning signs being purposefully obscured, the commission also included a clause that all sellers are legally required to maintain and update the signage when required.
“Any situation where the warning signage is dirtied, damaged, detached or otherwise obscured will need to be promptly updated and maintained by the seller,” it said.
“The displayed warning must not be split, rotated, deformed or distorted in anyway.”
