Australia / RCM / ACMA
Every other major electronics market we cover — EU, UK, US, South Korea, India, China — has a live 2026 deadline. Australia is no exception, and it's easy to miss precisely because nothing about it looks like a single headline deadline: a new safety standard, a labelling transition that already ended, and tightened RF test limits for wireless devices, all now in force together.
Last updated 22 August 2026
Standards Australia published AS/NZS 62368.1:2026 on 6 March 2026, a modified national adoption of IEC 62368-1:2023 Edition 4.0 — the safety standard covering audio/video, information technology and communications equipment. It carries a transition deadline of 6 March 2029, after which equipment can no longer rely on safety test reports issued against the prior edition. Three years sounds distant, but safety re-certification against a new edition is exactly the kind of item that gets left until the deadline is close and then collides with a product's next production run.
Source: iCertifi, "Australia and New Zealand Publish AS/NZS 62368.1:2026".
A one-year transition period that allowed certain previously-exempt cabling products — patch leads, data cables and similar items — to go to market without RCM labelling ended on 30 March 2026. Those products now need the RCM label like any other regulated telecommunications or electrical item sold in Australia. This is the kind of scope change that's straightforward to comply with once flagged, and easy to carry an unlabelled SKU straight through if nobody rechecked labelling requirements after the transition was first announced.
Source: C-PRAV Group, "Electrical Safety of Electronic Equipment Under Australia's RCM".
The Radiocommunications (Low Interference Potential Devices) Class Licence 2025, alongside the updated AS/CA S042:2026 RF standard, tightens test limits for short-range wireless devices — Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, RFID and UWB among them — and both are now in full enforcement. A device cleared under the prior class licence or an earlier version of AS/CA S042 is not automatically still compliant; the limits it was tested against have moved. Any IoT or connected-electronics product with an existing Australian compliance file is worth rechecking against the current standard before its next production batch or a new market entry.
Source: iCertifi; C-PRAV Group.
Any manufacturer or importer placing consumer electronics, IoT devices, or cabling/accessory products on the Australian market — whether Australia is a primary market or one of several export destinations alongside the EU, UK, US or APAC. Because none of these three changes arrived as one clearly-dated headline deadline the way CRA or RoHS did, a compliance review built around a single-country checklist can miss all three at once. Anyone treating Australia as a low-friction "same as UK/EU" market is the most likely to be caught out.
The Regulatory Compliance Mark (RCM) is Australia and New Zealand's combined mark covering EMC, radiocommunications, telecommunications and electrical safety requirements. Applying the RCM is a self-declaration that the product meets all applicable standards under the relevant regulatory schemes administered by ACMA (electromagnetic compatibility, radiocommunications) and, for electrical safety, the state/territory electrical equipment safety system aligned to the Electrical Regulatory Authorities Council (ERAC) framework.
AS/NZS 62368.1:2026 is Standards Australia's modified adoption of IEC 62368-1:2023 Edition 4.0, the safety standard covering audio/video, IT and communications equipment. Published 6 March 2026, it carries a transition deadline of 6 March 2029 for equipment still relying on the prior edition. Manufacturers with electronics or IoT products sold in Australia should confirm which edition their existing safety test reports were issued against and plan re-testing before the transition window closes.
A one-year transition period for previously-exempt cabling products (certain patch leads, data cables and similar items that had been outside RCM labelling requirements) ended 30 March 2026. Those products must now carry the RCM label like any other regulated telecommunications or electrical item — a change easy to miss for suppliers who last checked labelling scope before the transition was announced.
The Radiocommunications (Low Interference Potential Devices) Class Licence 2025 and the updated AS/CA S042:2026 standard tightened RF test limits for short-range wireless devices — Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, RFID and UWB among them. Both are now in full enforcement, meaning devices tested and cleared under the prior class licence or standard version should be re-checked against the current limits before a new production run or a new market entry.
Adding Australia to a market-access review already covering the EU, UK, US or APAC usually means a separate check against a standard and labelling regime that doesn't map cleanly onto any of those — and, this year, three separate changes rather than one. We fold the current AS/NZS 62368.1:2026 status, RCM labelling scope and RF test-limit conformity into the same market-access review we run for every other jurisdiction we cover, so it's one process per product, not a fresh one per country.
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