European Commission Adopts EU KIDS Act Proposal Covering Online Games

The European Commission adopted the EU KIDS Act on September 17, 2026, a proposal for an EU regulation that pairs EU-wide age rules for social media accounts with safety-by-design obligations reaching online games, video gaming platforms, app stores and AI chatbots.

Formally titled “EU Keeping Internet Digital Spaces Accountable and Trustworthy” (COM(2026) 681 final), the proposal text is dated Brussels, September 17, 2026, and rests on Article 114 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the treaty article covering measures that ensure the functioning of the internal market. The proposal states that diverging national age rules risk fragmenting the single market, reducing legal certainty and increasing compliance costs. An accompanying Communication and a Staff Working Document analysing the proposal’s impacts were published the same day in the Commission’s legislation library.

The Tiered Age Rules

The proposal prohibits social media platforms from providing accounts to children under 13 and sets an EU-wide minimum age of 15 for minors to open an account of their own, the Commission said. The age rules apply to social networking and video-sharing services carrying defined risky features, including real-time dissemination to an indeterminate audience, contact with unknown users, profiling-based recommender systems and engagement-driving design.

From 13 to under 15, a guardian can set up a limited account and stays in control, with parental tools always on, a daily time limit of at most one hour and parental approval of contacts, according to the Commission’s Q&A document. Children under 13 hold no accounts. On video platforms designed specifically for young children, a parent may allow limited access through the parent’s own account, with personalised feeds and search switched off and a daily limit of up to one hour. That arrangement ends at 13, and access cannot be enabled for a child below the age of three.

Within six months of the rules applying, platforms must check whether existing account holders are under 15 and disable the accounts of those who are, or whose age cannot be established. Where a platform can already tell with high confidence that a user is an adult, no new check is needed.

The Commission said the act reverses the burden of proof, so service providers will have to show that their services are age-appropriate and safe by design. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the act “is reversing the burden of proof – it is for platforms to show they are safe by design,” adding that it puts parents “back in the driving seat.”

Online Games and App Stores

The regulation applies to providers of online social networking services, video-sharing platform services, software application stores, online games, operating systems, AI companions and general conversational chatbots accessible to minors. It exempts not-for-profit encyclopaedias, not-for-profit educational and scientific repositories, services operated by educational establishments, open-source software platforms, scientific-research services and public-authority services. Small and micro enterprises are not exempted.

The text defines covered online games broadly: any game playable on a computer, mobile device or console, whether the underlying software runs locally or remotely or arrives on a durable medium, and whether the service is free, paid or hybrid with in-service purchases. Games accessible or purchasable exclusively through physical media, with no online component enabling their access, distribution or purchase, are not considered online games.

Online games must follow the proposal’s addictive-design and safe-settings obligations as well as rules tailored to games. Those include safeguards to prevent games being used to entice minors into initiating contacts on other services, such as restricting link-outs and displaying warning messages. Games may not expose minors to features that undermine a minor’s decision to stop playing, or that reward engagement at regular times or with greater frequency, including penalties or loss of benefits for failing to engage regularly or within specified intervals. Video gaming platforms that let users create games must put in place the software and organisational measures needed for those user-created games to comply. AI companions or chatbots embedded in a game may not switch on automatically, may not be pushed at children and must be easy to turn off.

The recitals state that minors playing online games should benefit from the same protection on economic transactions as on social networking and video-sharing services, including transparency about the real monetary value of transactions carried out through virtual currencies and protection from exposure to variable reward systems, whose association with gambling-related and compulsive behaviours the text describes as well documented. The operative economic-transaction obligations — real-time labelling of purchases as economic transactions, prices displayed in the national currency of the minor’s habitual residence, and no exposure of minors to loot boxes or similar products with random or unpredictable outcomes — are written for online social networking services and video-sharing platform services.

Software application stores must operate an age-rating system covering every app, including videogames, publish the methodology, criteria and sources behind it, block minors from accessing or buying age-inappropriate apps, assess users’ ages under the proposal’s age-assurance chapter and carry the EU age verification app. The proposal encourages Union-level codes of conduct on age ratings and describes the PEGI age classification system and PEGI Code of Conduct as a benchmark that could be integrated as a code of conduct under the regulation, provided it delivers the required level of protection.

Age Assurance, Enforcement and Background

Self-declared age is explicitly insufficient under the proposal; access must be gated by certified age verification. Checks run through certified solutions independent of platforms, including a free EU age verification app and, in time, the European Digital Identity Wallet, using zero-knowledge-proof technology that tells the platform only whether a user is above or below the age threshold. Every Member State must offer at least one free way to prove age.

Platforms with 45 million or more active monthly users in the EU must, before coming into contact with children under the new rules, submit a detailed compliance plan and have it checked by independent auditors paid by the platform; the Commission can object to an auditor whose independence is not ensured. Fines can reach 6% of total worldwide annual turnover, and an expedited procedure sets preliminary findings within 30 days and targets a final decision within 90 days for Commission-supervised services. Enforcement builds on Digital Services Act and AI Act structures: the Commission directly supervises the largest platforms and AI chatbots, digital service coordinators and national market surveillance authorities handle the other covered services and AI systems, and national authorities designated by Member States supervise video games that are not online platforms, with the competent authority being that of the provider’s Member State of main establishment.

The explanatory memorandum records the path to the proposal. Von der Leyen announced an expert panel on child safety online in her 2025 State of the Union, and the Special Panel’s co-chairs presented recommendations in July 2026 calling for an EU-wide access restriction, harmonised safety-by-design rules and coverage of services beyond social media, including app stores, AI companions and some video games. The Jutland Declaration of October 2025, signed by 25 Member States, called for age verification and a safer online environment for minors. The European Parliament’s November 2025 report sought a harmonised digital age limit of 16 for social media, video-sharing platforms and AI companions unless parents authorised otherwise, and a limit of 13 below which no minor accesses social media. Italy, France, Norway, Greece, Austria, Poland and Belgium notified draft national legislation restricting minors’ access to certain digital services in 2025 and 2026, with Norway also notifying in May 2026.

A Eurobarometer conducted in March and April 2026 collected data from more than 26,000 respondents aged 13–18 and more than 12,000 parents across all 27 Member States. Nine in ten adolescents had encountered at least one harmful or distressing piece of content online in the past three months, and 54% of parents and 45% of adolescents considered age delays an effective solution. The Commission’s policy overview cites a recent survey finding that adolescents aged 13–18 spend on average 4.5 hours a day on screens on school days and 6.1 hours at weekends, and states that only half of children aged 9–16 across Europe say they feel safe online, with 38% reporting difficulty falling asleep because of social media and 33% often feeling stressed or anxious because of it.

The proposal now goes before the European Parliament and the Council under the ordinary legislative procedure.