Amazon’s 75-character titles in Europe: writing titles that survive DE, FR, IT and ES

What changed

Amazon’s product title requirements now cap product titles at 75 characters including spaces in all categories except media, effective 27 July 2026. The same page sets the earlier title rules, which still apply: no word more than twice (articles, prepositions and conjunctions excepted), no promotional phrases, and no special characters such as ! $ ? _ { } ^ ¬ ¦ unless they are part of the brand name.

Alongside the limit, Amazon’s announcement in the Seller Forums introduced Item Highlights: up to 125 characters of detail shown with the title. It also explains that titles over the limit are rewritten by Amazon gradually, and that brand owners get a 14-day window to review those rewrites under Review Listing Changes.

My observation, not an Amazon figure: when I checked a sample of live Amazon.es listings on 2 October 2026, many titles were still over 75 characters. It was a spot check, not a measurement of the catalogue, but it suggests the rollout is gradual and plenty of titles are still waiting to be rewritten, by the brand or by Amazon.

Why 75 characters is a different problem in every European language

The same product needs a different number of characters in each market. Here is one product type and one full title, counted character by character:

The English title fits. The same title, translated, breaks the limit in Spanish and Italian and barely survives in French. German, against intuition, comes out shortest: compound nouns pack meaning into fewer characters, while Spanish, Italian and French need prepositions and longer product terms. A title that works in one market is not a template for the others.

What stays in the title and what moves to Item Highlights

Keep in the 75 characters only what decides the click in search results:

1. Brand.
2. The product type, in the term local shoppers actually search (not a literal translation).
3. The one attribute that separates your product (power, capacity, size, compatibility).
4. Pack or variant information when it changes the purchase.

Move to Item Highlights and bullets: secondary specifications, materials, use cases, included accessories, and the synonyms you used to stuff into the title.

How I approach it: rebuild from data, not from the old title

When I localise catalogues for Germany, France, Italy and Spain, titles are not written by hand from the English version. They are generated from structured product data, one market at a time:

1. Export the catalogue and map each product type’s attributes into a master catalogue.
2. Choose the local head term per market from search behaviour, not translation.
3. Define the attribute order per product type (brand, type, key attribute, pack).
4. Generate title candidates per language with the 75-character limit as a hard rule, and Item Highlights from the attributes that did not fit.
5. Review with a native speaker; AI drafts, people approve.
6. Validate every title against the rules (the Amazon Title Checker does this in the browser) and upload by flat file.

That is the same workflow I describe in the case study on master catalogue and AI localisation. Localisation itself is covered in Amazon listing localization for Europe.

Parent titles and variation families

Check parent titles too, not only the children you sell. My recommendation: keep the variation attribute (colour, size) out of the parent title and let the child carry it; a parent title that names one size will look wrong for every other child.

Common mistakes

• Translating the English 75-character title instead of rebuilding it per market.
• Cutting the product type to save characters: shoppers and search lose the one word that matters.
• Filling Item Highlights with the keyword list that used to be in the title.
• Leaving the rewrite to Amazon on best-selling ASINs.
• Fixing Spain and forgetting the same ASIN in Germany, France and Italy.

Checklist

• Every title is 75 characters or fewer, spaces included, in every marketplace.
• Brand first, then the local product term, then the deciding attribute.
• No word more than twice; no promotional phrases; no disallowed special characters.
• Item Highlights written per language, up to 125 characters.
• Parent titles without variation attributes.
• Suggested rewrites reviewed in the 14-day window (with Brand Registry).