DMA Gatekeeper Compliance: What Changed in 2026

The DMA After Two Years of Enforcement

The Digital Markets Act’s obligations became fully applicable in March 2024 for the six companies the European Commission had designated as gatekeepers in September 2023: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft. Booking was added as a seventh gatekeeper in May 2024. Two years on, the results are visible across the European digital landscape. Some gatekeepers have complied in substance. Others have complied only in letter, prompting the Commission to open non-compliance proceedings and issue substantial fines.

The DMA is the EU’s most ambitious attempt to reshape digital markets, and 2026 has been the year where its practical impact became undeniable.

What the Gatekeepers Were Required to Do

The DMA imposed a series of concrete obligations on designated gatekeepers across their core platform services:

Interoperability: Messaging platforms must open their protocols to third-party services. In November 2025 Meta announced “third-party chats” for WhatsApp users in Europe, with BirdyChat and Haiket as the first partner apps and a gradual, opt-in rollout. The scope is still limited: group chats with users of other apps are not yet supported.

Sideloading and alternative app stores: Apple was required to allow sideloading of apps and alternative app stores on iOS within the EU. The company complied by introducing alternative marketplace support, though the associated fees and technical restrictions prompted the Commission to investigate whether the compliance was genuine or designed to discourage adoption.

Data portability: Gatekeepers must provide effective tools for users to export their data and switch to competing services. Google’s data export tools have expanded significantly, though the usability and completeness of exports vary by service.

Self-preferencing prohibition: Search engines, marketplaces, and app stores cannot systematically rank their own products above competitors. Google has restructured Google Shopping and Google Maps results in EU search, but in March 2025 the Commission preliminarily found that Google Search still favours Alphabet’s own services, and in July 2026 it fined Alphabet €460 million for this (plus €430 million over Google Play’s anti-steering rules).

No cross-service data combination: Gatekeepers cannot combine personal data across their different services without explicit user consent. Meta’s practice of merging data across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp for advertising purposes has been directly curtailed in the EU.

Enforcement Actions and Fines

The Commission has not been hesitant to use its enforcement powers. Multiple non-compliance proceedings have been opened, focusing primarily on Apple’s app store practices and Meta’s “pay or consent” advertising model. The first DMA fines followed in April 2025: €500 million for Apple over its App Store anti-steering rules and €200 million for Meta over “pay or consent”.

The DMA allows fines of up to 10% of global annual turnover for non-compliance, rising to 20% for repeat infringements. These thresholds give the regulation genuine deterrent power — for a company like Apple, a 10% fine could exceed USD 30 billion.

The Market Impact

Beyond compliance proceedings, the DMA is reshaping competitive dynamics. Alternative app stores on iOS remain niche but exist for the first time. Browser choice screens — shown when users set up new devices — have given smaller browsers a visible entry point, and several smaller browser makers have reported more EU users since they were introduced.

The data portability requirements also open room for services that help users migrate between platforms, a niche where European startups building interoperability tools, alternative marketplaces, and data migration services stand to benefit directly from the market opening the DMA created.

For European alternative services featured on this site, the DMA is a structural tailwind. When Apple must allow alternative app stores, when Google must stop self-preferencing, and when Meta must stop combining data across services, the playing field tilts toward smaller, privacy-respecting European competitors that previously could not break through gatekeeper lock-in.

What Comes Next

The list of gatekeepers has also evolved. Booking.com was designated in May 2024, while the Commission decided in October 2024 not to designate X (formerly Twitter). In its first DMA review, published in April 2026, the Commission concluded that no legislative amendments are needed and named AI and cloud computing as enforcement priorities; in June 2026 it preliminarily found that Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure should be designated as gatekeepers for cloud computing. On messaging, the DMA phases in interoperability: group chats come next, followed by voice and video calls, and WhatsApp has said group chats with third-party apps will follow once partners are ready.

Perhaps most significantly, the DMA is inspiring similar legislation globally. Japan, South Korea, Brazil, and the United Kingdom have all introduced or proposed digital markets legislation modeled on the DMA framework. Europe’s approach — regulating market structure rather than individual harms — is becoming the global template for digital competition policy.

The DMA is proof that regulation can reshape digital markets when backed by political will and meaningful enforcement. For European businesses and consumers, 2026 is the year those changes became tangible.