What changes for Indian exporters on 1 October 2026?

What exactly changes on 1 October 2026?

Four instruments, four different issuing authorities, one date. They are listed here with the notification that carries each one, because the single most useful thing an exporter can do in the next week is establish which of the four actually touches their business. For most exporters it is one or two, not four.

Which side of the cut-over is my shipment on?

For the FEMA change, the test is the date of shipment , and Regulation 5(1)(a) of the 2026 Regulations is what makes it the operative date. That single fact resolves most of the confusion in circulation, because it means the cut-over is not a date on which your existing obligations are re-cut. It is a date from which new shipments carry a different obligation.

For RoDTEP the operative date is the shipping bill: the scheme period in Notification No. 74/2025-26 is expressed as exports made between 1 April 2026 and 30 September 2026. For the sugar notification the policy applies at the point of export, with the notification's own carve-outs for shipments already loaded and for the quota and Advance Authorisation routes described in section 6.

The date of shipment is not always the date you think it is, and this site treats that as a question in its own right. The guide to when the realisation clock actually starts sets out which date on which document governs, and why the invoice date and the container gate-in date are both wrong anchors.

How long will I have to bring the money home?

This is the change with the widest reach, because the realisation period applies to every exporter rather than to a sector. It has also moved more than once in the last year, which is why a table is more honest than a sentence.

Two details inside the new period are worth reading precisely rather than summarising. Regulation 5(1)(a) runs the fifteen months from the date of shipment for goods, and from the date of invoice for services. A distinction that matters to anyone billing for work rather than shipping a container. Regulation 5(1)(b) deals separately with goods exported to a warehouse established outside India, where the fifteen months runs from the date of sale from that warehouse.

The Indian Rupee limb is the one most likely to be missed, because it is a proviso rather than a headline. If your export is invoiced or settled in INR, the period is eighteen months rather than fifteen.

What happens to SOFTEX, and who certifies now?

The 2026 Regulations provide a single Export Declaration Form covering both goods and services. SOFTEX existed because software sat outside the goods declaration; once one form covers both, the separate form has nothing left to do.

The operational change underneath the form is the one that will actually alter a software exporter's month. Under the 2026 Regulations the specified authority is set by category, and for software in the Domestic Tariff Area it is an Authorised Dealer or STPI . STPI stops being the only route. For a non-STP exporter who has been routing declarations through STPI because there was nowhere else to route them, that is a genuine structural change rather than a renamed form.

The form change and the certifier change are set out at length, with the historical position on what the EDF did and did not replace in 2013, in this site's guide to the SOFTEX-to-EDF change .

Can I claim RoDTEP on a shipment made on or after 1 October?

The position as at the date on this page is narrow and can be stated exactly. RoDTEP rates and value caps are notified only to 30 September 2026. DGFT Notification No. 74/2025-26, dated 31 March 2026, continued the Appendix 4R and Appendix 4RE rates and caps unchanged for exports made from 1 April 2026 to 30 September 2026, and no instrument notifying rates beyond that date was found when this page was written.

That is a statement about what is notified, not a prediction. The scheme has been extended on a rolling basis before, and this page deliberately does not forecast whether it will be again. See section 8.

If you are checking what a shipment would yield at the rates currently in force, this site's RoDTEP calculator works from the Appendix 4R schedule and states the same 30 September 2026 boundary against its result.

Does the sugar prohibition lift on 1 October?

DGFT Notification No. 16/2026-27, dated 13 May 2026, amended the export policy of Raw Sugar, White Sugar and Refined Sugar under ITC (HS) 1701 14 90 and 1701 99 90 from Restricted to Prohibited with immediate effect, until 30 September 2026 or until further orders, whichever is earlier.

The notification carries its own carve-outs, and they were in force throughout the prohibition rather than arriving with its end: exports to the European Union and the United States under the existing concessional quota arrangements continue under the procedures laid down for them, and shipments under the Advance Authorisation Scheme continue to be governed by the Foreign Trade Policy 2023. Consignments where loading onto the vessel had commenced before the notification was published were allowed to proceed.

The wording "or until further orders, whichever is earlier" also cuts both ways, and it is worth noticing that it does not only mean the prohibition could end sooner. It means the date on the notification is not a commitment that the position on 1 October will be the one you are planning for.

What is worth doing before 30 September?

Short list, in the order the cost of missing it falls.

• Freeze the deadline on every bill shipped on or before 30 September 2026. Write the date of shipment and the resulting due date against each outstanding entry now, while the applicable period is unambiguous. This is the single step that prevents the backwards reading in section 2.
• Check whether any outstanding bill shipped between 14 November 2025 and 4 June 2026. That window sat under a temporary fifteen-month substitution and is a separate question from the 1 October change. Confirm the period with your AD bank rather than inferring it.
• Confirm the RoDTEP declaration is set to go on October shipping bills. Before the Let Export Order, on every bill, regardless of what is notified. Recovering the position afterwards means a Section 149 amendment application, which is discretionary and slow.
• If you export software, establish now who will certify from 1 October. An Authorised Dealer or STPI, for the Domestic Tariff Area. Ask your AD bank whether it is ready to take the declaration before you need it to.
• Take any RoDTEP-sensitive price out of quotes that ship after September. Or state the assumption explicitly to the buyer, so a lapse is a renegotiation rather than a loss you absorb silently.

Which parts does this guide not state, and why?

Several things an exporter will hear about this cut-over are not on this page. They are named here rather than left out silently, because on a page about dated changes an omission is itself information.

• Whether RoDTEP will be extended beyond 30 September 2026. Press reporting about a proposed extension and a budgetary figure has circulated. No notification carries it, so no figure or duration from that reporting appears on this page. What is stated is only what is notified.
• The transitional rule for bills in flight across the cut-over. The instruments state the period and the commencement date and do not set out a transitional rule on their face. The date of shipment is the test this page applies; a borderline bill is a question for your AD bank.
• The specified authority for units in Special Economic Zones. The 2026 Regulations set it separately for SEZ units, and section 4 is scoped to the Domestic Tariff Area for that reason.
• Whether monthly consolidated filing replaces transaction-level declarations, and the position of non-STP units and freelancers. Asserted in several practitioner commentaries; not found in the notification text, so not stated here.
• Penalty exposure under the 2026 Regulations. No amount, multiple or period is stated on this page.
• Whether the sugar prohibition will be extended, and any quota volume. The carve-outs are described by their existence, not by their tonnage, because no quota figure is sourced here.

Questions exporters are asking before the cut-over

My shipment leaves on 29 September. Does the new realisation period apply to it?

No. The 2026 Regulations key off the date of shipment, so a bill shipped on or before 30 September 2026 is not caught by them and stays on the period that applied when it shipped. Nine months from the date of export under Regulation 9(1) and 9(2)(a) of FEMA Notification No. 23(R)/2015-RB, as stated at para A.2(i) of RBI Master Direction No. 16/2015-16. This is the trap worth naming out loud, because the instinct on 1 October is that everything outstanding moves to fifteen months. It does not. A bill shipped in September still runs out in June, and an exporter who assumes otherwise discovers it as an overdue EDPMS entry rather than as a diary note.

Do the 2026 Regulations set out what happens to bills already in flight?

Not on their face, and that is the honest answer rather than a cautious one. This site's existing guidance on the November 2025 substitution reached the same conclusion for that earlier change: the instruments state the period and the commencement date, and they do not carry a transitional rule for a bill that shipped under one regime and is outstanding under the next. The practical consequence is that the date of shipment is the only test you can apply yourself, and anything that looks borderline is a question for your Authorised Dealer bank before you compute a deadline rather than after.

Should I still tick the RoDTEP declaration on a shipping bill filed in October?

Yes, and this is the cheapest decision on this page. What goes on the shipping bill is a declaration of intent to claim, made in the relevant column before the Let Export Order is issued. And it is the declaration that makes the benefit accrue. An omission is not curable as of right afterwards: the only route is an amendment application under Section 149 of the Customs Act, 1962, which is discretionary, commonly refused and measured in months rather than days. So the declaration costs nothing and commits you to nothing, while its absence puts you in a process you do not control. Treat the declaration and the money as two separate questions: declare on every bill, and price as though nothing is coming.

Does SOFTEX still exist after 1 October 2026?

Not as a separate form. Notification No. FEMA 23(R)/2026-RB dated 13 January 2026 supersedes the 2015 Regulations from 1 October 2026 and provides a single Export Declaration Form covering both goods and services, which is what SOFTEX was separate from. The change that matters more to a software exporter than the form itself is who certifies it: under the 2026 Regulations the specified authority for software in the Domestic Tariff Area is an Authorised Dealer or STPI, so STPI stops being the only route. This guide states that limb for the DTA only.

Can I export sugar again from 1 October?

Not freely, and the distinction is the whole answer. DGFT Notification No. 16/2026-27 dated 13 May 2026 moved Raw, White and Refined Sugar under ITC (HS) 1701 14 90 and 1701 99 90 from Restricted to Prohibited until 30 September 2026, or until further orders, whichever is earlier. What lapses on that date is the prohibition, not the restriction underneath it. So unless the prohibition is extended, the policy returns to Restricted, which still requires an authorisation. An exporter who reads the lapse as a reopening books a vessel against a policy that never said Free.

Four things change at once. Which one should I look at first?

Whichever one has a date you cannot move. The realisation period is the only one of the four that attaches to a shipment you have already made, so check your outstanding bills first: anything shipped on or before 30 September 2026 keeps its original clock regardless of what happens afterwards. RoDTEP is second, because it affects what you put on a shipping bill you are about to file. SOFTEX and the sugar prohibition are narrower. They matter enormously if you are a software exporter or a sugar exporter and not at all otherwise.

What should I read next?

• When does the realisation clock actually start. Which date on which document
• SOFTEX to EDF. What the 2026 Regulations do to a software export declaration
• Small-value exports and the simplified closure route under EDPMS
• FEMA repatriation for e-commerce exporters. What the rules assume and what actually happens
• The RoDTEP calculator. Rates and value caps from Appendix 4R

Know which clock every open bill is running on

Seasaw keeps the date of shipment beside every outstanding export entry and the payout that closes it. So when a period changes, you can see which bills are affected and which ones simply are not.

Learn more about Seasaw

Update history

• 2026-09-22 First published.