The 15 Food Allergens Restaurants Must Know: EU Allergen List (2026)
More than 17 million people in Europe live with a food allergy. Tonight, a few of them are sitting in your dining room, reading your menu, and quietly deciding whether they trust you.
Short answer: EU law (Regulation 1169/2011, Annex II) names 14 allergens that every restaurant, cafe, bar and food truck must declare: cereals containing gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soybeans, milk, tree nuts, celery, mustard, sesame, sulphur dioxide and sulphites, lupin, and molluscs. There is a 15th — buckwheat — that the EU list doesn't name but that sends people to hospital anyway, and careful kitchens now track it too. The list is identical in every EU country. How you must hand that information to a guest is not — each country sets that part itself.
That last sentence is where most owners get caught. Same list, different paperwork.
Why allergens matter more in 2026 than they did in 2016
The numbers moved, and they moved the wrong way.
- 17 million+ Europeans have a food allergy, according to EAACI.
- Hospital admissions for anaphylaxis tripled between 1998 and 2018.
- Roughly 4% of preschool children and 2.4% of school-age children in Europe now have a food allergy.
- The European Commission ran a public allergen labelling campaign in February 2026 — a sign of where the attention is going.
Then there's the part nobody writes on a poster. Allergy guests don't come alone. They come with four friends, a birthday, and a booking. When your waiter says "I'm not really sure about the sauce", the whole table stands up and walks to the place next door. You didn't lose one cover. You lost six, plus the review.
And in a tourist town, that guest may be from a country where written allergen info is normal, on a menu they can't read, in a language they don't speak. If your menu answers the question before they ask it, you win a table your neighbour just lost.
The 14 allergens EU law names
Here's the full EU allergen list, plus the places each one hides where kitchens forget to look.
| # | Allergen | What it covers | Where it hides |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cereals containing gluten | Wheat, rye, barley, oats, spelt, kamut | Soy sauce, stock cubes, thickened sauces, beer, dusted fries, sausages |
| 2 | Crustaceans | Prawns, shrimp, crab, lobster, langoustine | Fish stock, Asian pastes, seafood-flavoured rice, some XO sauces |
| 3 | Eggs | Whole egg, white, yolk, powder | Mayonnaise, aioli, fresh pasta, batter, mousse, glazed pastry, some ice creams |
| 4 | Fish | All fish and fish products | Worcestershire sauce, Caesar dressing, fish sauce, some kimchi, gelatine |
| 5 | Peanuts | Peanut and peanut products | Satay, mole, chilli oil, "vegetable oil" that's really groundnut, energy bars |
| 6 | Soybeans | Soy, edamame, tofu, soy lecithin | Soy sauce, marinades, chocolate, bread improvers, veggie burgers |
| 7 | Milk | Cow, goat and sheep milk, incl. lactose | Butter-finished sauces, ghee, pesto, mash, "creamed" anything, some bread |
| 8 | Tree nuts | Almond, hazelnut, walnut, cashew, pecan, Brazil, pistachio, macadamia | Pesto, praline, nut milks, salad toppers, baklava, dukkah, some vegan cheese |
| 9 | Celery | Stalk, leaf, seed, celeriac | Stock, bouillon powder, soup base, spice mixes, tomato juice, brines |
| 10 | Mustard | Seed, powder, paste, oil | Vinaigrette, mayo, pickles, curry powder, marinades, burger sauce |
| 11 | Sesame | Seeds, oil, paste | Tahini, hummus, burger buns, falafel, dukkah, "seed mix" bread |
| 12 | Sulphur dioxide and sulphites | Above 10 mg/kg or 10 mg/l as SO₂ | Wine, dried fruit, vinegar, some potato products, pickles, fruit juices |
| 13 | Lupin | Lupin flour and seeds | Gluten-free bread, some pasta, vegan protein, imported pastries |
| 14 | Molluscs | Mussels, clams, oysters, squid, octopus, snails | Oyster sauce, paella base, seafood stock, some fish soups |
Good news for 2026: the list has not changed. Nothing was added, nothing was removed. If you built your allergen sheet three years ago, it still works — it just needs to be checked against your current recipes.
The five that catch kitchens out
Nine of the fourteen are obvious. Five are not, and these are where inspections and incidents cluster.
Celery. It's in almost every stock cube and bouillon powder on the market. That means your soup, your risotto, your gravy, your braise, and half your sauces. Most chefs declare celery on the celery salad and forget the chicken stock.
Mustard. A teaspoon of Dijon lives inside nearly every vinaigrette and burger sauce. It's also standard in curry powder. If you make dressing in-house, mustard is probably in it.
Sulphites. These are a threshold allergen — you only declare above 10 mg/kg or 10 mg/l. Wine is the big one, but dried apricots, vinegar, some pre-cut potato products, and pickles all carry them. Wine used in cooking counts.
Lupin. Rare in some kitchens, everywhere in others. It turns up in gluten-free flour blends, so the "safe" bread you bought for coeliac guests can carry an allergen you never heard of.
Sesame. Not just the visible seeds on a bun. Tahini in a sauce, sesame oil finishing a stir-fry, dukkah on a flatbread. Sesame oil is one of the most under-declared ingredients in European kitchens.
If you only audit five things this month, audit these five.
The 15th allergen: buckwheat
Buckwheat is not on the EU's Annex II list. It should probably be on your menu anyway.
Here's why. Buckwheat is a mandatory declared allergen in Japan and South Korea — two countries with decades of allergen data. And in France, the Allergy-Vigilance Network found buckwheat involved in 2.4% of recorded food anaphylaxis cases between 2002 and 2023. French researchers have proposed adding it to the EU list.
Meanwhile, buckwheat is having a moment on European menus:
- Breton galettes and crêpes
- Blini, kasha and Eastern European sides
- Soba noodles
- Gluten-free flour blends, pancakes and pasta
- "Ancient grain" salads and health bowls
Notice the pattern? Buckwheat is often the thing a kitchen swaps in to be safer for gluten guests. That's exactly how it ends up in front of the one person who reacts to it.
Good menu systems now let you declare 15 allergens instead of 14 for this reason. Declaring more than the law asks costs you nothing and takes one extra tap.
What the law actually asks of you
Strip away the legal language and the EU baseline is short:
- Allergen information must be available for every dish you serve. Not most dishes. Every dish, including specials and the kids' menu.
- The guest must be able to get it before they order — not when the plate lands.
- It covers ingredients and processing aids — including the oil you fry in and the flour you dust with.
- There's no small-business exemption. A five-seat cafe, a food truck, a school canteen and a 200-cover restaurant all carry the same duty.
- Takeaway and delivery count too. If a guest can't ask a waiter, the information has to travel with the order.
- "I don't know" is not an answer. If you genuinely can't confirm, you say so clearly and don't serve the dish as safe.
That's it. Six rules. Everything else is about the how — and the how is where countries go their own way.
The rule that changes at the border
Article 44 of Regulation 1169/2011 lets each member state decide how allergen information for non-prepacked food must be delivered. So the list is the same in Lisbon and Tallinn. The paperwork is not.
| Country | What's expected for food served loose |
|---|---|
| Ireland | In writing, clear and legible, accessible without the guest having to ask |
| Spain | Available in writing before ordering — menu, board, digital menu, or another visible medium (Real Decreto 126/2015) |
| Netherlands | Information must be available; spoken is accepted when a clear notice tells guests to ask and a written record backs it up |
| Most other EU states | Spoken is usually allowed — but normally only with a visible notice plus a written record staff can produce on request |
Three things are true almost everywhere, whatever your national rule says:
- If you give the information out loud, you still need it written down somewhere — for staff, for the inspector, and for the guest who wants to see it.
- You need a visible sign telling guests that allergen information exists and how to get it. A guest shouldn't have to guess.
- The written record must match what's actually in the pot today, not what the recipe said in 2023.
Check your own national food authority before you print anything: the FSAI in Ireland, the NVWA in the Netherlands, AESAN in Spain, ASAE in Portugal, the sanitary inspectorate in Poland. Rules on the method change; the 14 allergens don't.
"May contain" is finally getting real rules
This is the 2026 story worth following.
For years, "may contain nuts" meant nothing. Some kitchens wrote it out of genuine risk. Others wrote it on everything as legal cover. Allergic guests learned to ignore it — which is the worst possible outcome.
That's changing. At the Codex Committee on Food Labelling meeting in Ottawa in May 2026, guidelines on precautionary allergen labelling were recommended for adoption, built around reference doses — actual measurable thresholds instead of a shrug. The EU is working toward harmonised precautionary labelling rules, expected around late 2027.
What this means for a restaurant, in plain words:
- "May contain" will stop being a free pass. You'll be expected to show why you wrote it.
- A real risk assessment beats a blanket warning.
- If a dish is safe, say it's safe. If it isn't, say that instead — and say why.
You don't need to do anything today. But if you're building your allergen system now, build it so you could explain every warning you print. That habit will age well.
Cross-contact: the part that isn't on any list
The fourteen allergens are about ingredients. Most real incidents are about kitchens.
A dish can contain zero peanuts and still hurt someone. The usual suspects:
- Shared fryer oil. Breaded fish and fries in the same basket means every portion of fries contains gluten and fish.
- The same tongs. Down the line: cheese, then salad, then the "dairy-free" plate.
- Flour dust. It travels further in a bakery than anyone believes.
- A wiped knife. Wiping is not washing.
- The garnish reflex. A cook grabs the sesame shaker on autopilot at pass.
- The grill. Whatever was on it ten minutes ago is still on it.
Train the answer, not the guess. When a guest declares an allergy, the kitchen should: use a clean board, clean pan, clean tongs and fresh oil where possible; make the dish first rather than squeezed in mid-service; and hand it to the table personally, named out loud. That last step catches the plate that walked to the wrong seat.
Be honest about your limits, too. A tiny kitchen with one fryer cannot promise a peanut-free environment. Saying "we can't guarantee that here" is a professional answer. Guessing is not.
Build your allergen matrix in one afternoon
An allergen matrix is a grid: your dishes down the side, the 15 allergens across the top, a mark in every box that applies. It's the single document an inspector asks for and the one that saves your waiter on a busy Friday.
Step 1 — Gather the labels. Every packet, jar, tin and sack in the building. Photograph the ingredient panel of anything you don't cook from raw. Stock powder, sauces, bread, and oil first.
Step 2 — List your dishes. Pull them straight from your menu, including sides, dressings, kids' items and specials that keep coming back.
Step 3 — Work sauce-first. Sauces, dressings, stocks and marinades carry most hidden allergens. Do those before you do the proteins. You'll find celery and mustard immediately.
Step 4 — Fill the grid. Mark what's in the dish as an ingredient. Then mark separately what's a cross-contact risk. Two different marks, two different meanings — never mix them.
Step 5 — Add the frying oil and the dusting flour. Processing aids count. This is the row everyone forgets.
Step 6 — Date it and name an owner. One person is responsible for updating it. Ingredients change when suppliers change, and suppliers change more often than menus do — our note on supplier price and product changes covers why. A matrix nobody owns is out of date in six weeks.
Give this half a day with a coffee. For a 60-item menu that's genuinely all it takes, and you only build it once.
While you're deep in ingredient lists, it's also the perfect moment to check your numbers — the same data feeds straight into plate cost and food cost tracking.
Getting allergens onto the menu without reprinting anything
Here's the practical problem with paper. Your allergen matrix changes the week your bread supplier changes their recipe. Your printed menu doesn't. So the folder behind the bar says one thing and the menu on the table says another, and the waiter believes whichever they saw last.
A digital menu solves this in a way paper structurally can't:
- Tag allergens per dish, so a guest taps a dish and sees the list — in their own language.
- Change one ingredient once, and every table, every QR code and every delivery order updates instantly. No reprint. Our menu printing cost breakdown shows what reprints actually cost over a year.
- Filter the menu. A guest can hide everything with milk in it and see what's left. That's a much better night for them, and a bigger order for you.
- Carry allergens onto the order. The best setups freeze the declared allergens onto the order line, so the kitchen ticket and the receipt both show what was declared at the moment of ordering — not what the recipe looks like next month.
- Translate automatically. Fifteen allergen names in eight languages is not a job you want to do by hand at 11pm.
If your menu still lives in a PDF, the fastest route is our guide to turning a PDF menu into a digital QR menu, and if you're starting from scratch, how to create a QR code menu for free. Changing systems doesn't mean retyping either — switching without retyping your menu explains the shortcut. We also compared the free QR menu tools worth a look.
Keep the paper too. The setup guests like best is a short printed menu on the table plus a QR code for the full detail, allergens and other languages — the comparison is in QR menu vs printed menu.
For what it's worth: Tabres lets you declare all 15 allergens per product, in every menu language, and freezes them onto each order line and receipt. It's free, with no per-branch fee — our reasoning for that is public. Use whatever tool suits you; the steps above work anywhere.
What to train your waiters to say
Your matrix is only as good as the twenty seconds at the table. Give your floor staff four sentences and drill them.
When a guest mentions an allergy: "Thank you for telling me. Which allergy, so I get it exactly right?"
Then, always: "I'll check that with the kitchen and come straight back." Then actually go. Never answer from memory, no matter how many times you've been asked.
When the answer is no: "That dish has mustard in the dressing, but the chef can do it without. Would that work for you?" Offering the fix keeps the table.
When you can't be sure: "We fry that in the same oil as our fish, so I can't promise it's safe. Let me show you what I can promise." Honest, calm, and it keeps everyone out of hospital.
Three rules that go with the scripts:
- Never guess. Not once. "I think it's fine" is the sentence that ends careers.
- Write the allergy on the order, not on your hand. It has to reach the kitchen as text.
- Deliver the plate yourself and say the dish name out loud at the table.
New starters need this on day one, not week three. Our guides to training staff for better service, memorising a menu fast and first tips for new waiters all help here. And when someone asks a question that sounds odd, the answer is still a straight one — see answering unusual guest questions.
Allergy requests are also a form of dish modification, so your kitchen needs a process for them. Handling off-menu orders covers how to say yes without chaos.
Seven mistakes that cost restaurants money — or worse
- Trusting the recipe instead of the label. The recipe says "stock". The label says celery.
- One allergen folder, updated never. If the last date on it is 2024, it's decoration.
- Blanket "may contain" on everything. Guests stop reading it, and from 2027 you'll need to justify it.
- Only briefing full-timers. The weekend student takes allergy orders too.
- Forgetting drinks. Wine carries sulphites. Beer carries gluten. Some cocktails carry egg white, some smoothies carry nuts.
- Ignoring delivery. No waiter, no conversation — the information has to be in the order.
- Treating it as paperwork. It's service. A guest who gets a confident, specific answer becomes a regular, and often brings a group. That's revenue, not compliance.
An allergy handled badly also has a habit of ending up in public. If it does, our guides to replying to bad reviews and handling angry guests are worth reading before you type anything.
What it costs to get this right
| Item | Typical cost |
|---|---|
| Building your allergen matrix | Half a day of your own time |
| Allergen training for staff, online | $15 to $40 per person |
| Printing an allergen sheet for the folder | Under $10 |
| Tagging allergens in a digital menu | $0 on tools that include it |
| Updating after a recipe change | Seconds, if it's digital |
| Getting it wrong | Fines, a closure, a lawsuit — or someone's life |
The bottom row is why the other rows are cheap.
Frequently asked questions
How many allergens must restaurants declare in the EU? Fourteen. EU Regulation 1169/2011, Annex II lists them: cereals containing gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soybeans, milk, tree nuts, celery, mustard, sesame, sulphur dioxide and sulphites, lupin, and molluscs. Many kitchens track a 15th — buckwheat — because it causes serious reactions even though EU law doesn't require it.
Did the EU allergen list change in 2026? No. The 14 allergens in Annex II are unchanged. What is moving is the treatment of "may contain" warnings, where global guidance based on measurable reference doses was recommended for adoption in May 2026, with EU rules expected around late 2027.
Do I have to write allergens on the menu, or can staff just tell guests? It depends on your country. EU law sets the list; Article 44 lets each member state decide the method. Ireland requires clear written information the guest doesn't have to ask for. Spain requires it in writing before ordering. The Netherlands accepts spoken information when a visible notice points to it and a written record exists. Check your national food authority — and keep a written record either way.
Does the rule apply to a small cafe or a food truck? Yes. There's no exemption for size, turnover or type of kitchen. A two-person cafe carries the same duty as a hotel restaurant. If you're starting from home, our guides to selling food from home legally and the home kitchen startup checklist cover the wider rules.
What about delivery and takeaway orders? Same duty. Because there's no waiter to ask, the allergen information has to reach the guest another way — on the online menu before they order, and with the order when it arrives.
Is "may contain traces of nuts" enough? Not by itself, and it's getting weaker. Use it only where there's a genuine cross-contact risk you can explain. A warning printed on every dish tells the guest nothing and will be harder to defend as the new rules land.
Do allergens have to be listed in every language on my menu? Guests need information they can understand. If you publish your menu in several languages, allergens should be there in each one. A digital menu handles this automatically; a printed one means another print run.
Who is responsible if a guest reacts — the chef or the waiter? The business. That's why the system matters more than any one person: a written matrix, a clear order note that reaches the kitchen, and a plate handed over by name.
How often should I update my allergen information? Whenever a recipe changes, a supplier changes, or a new dish goes on. Then do a full review twice a year. Supplier reformulations are the silent killer — nobody tells you the bread recipe changed.
What's the fastest way to put allergens on my menu? Tag them per dish in a digital menu. You do the matrix once, tag as you go, and every change after that is instant — with no reprint and no folder that quietly goes stale.
Here's the honest summary. The list is fixed, short, and hasn't changed: 14 allergens in EU law, plus buckwheat if you want to be genuinely careful. Learning it takes an afternoon. What separates a good restaurant from a nervous one isn't knowing the list — it's having the answer ready before the guest has to ask twice.
Build the matrix this month. Put it somewhere your waiters can reach in ten seconds. Say "let me check" instead of "I think so". Do that, and the guest with the allergy stops being the table you dread and becomes the one who books you again — and brings five friends.
