A Christmas Thank-You to the Label Community and a Look Ahead to 2026

As 2025 draws to a close, we look back on a year in which a quiet mood of uncertainty has dominated business conversations around Europe. Many of us have spent this year recalibrating rather than expanding, testing assumptions rather than celebrating certainties. In our quarterly FINAT RADAR reports, that tone surfaced again and again: fragile growth after a turbulent cycle, nervous consumer confidence, geopolitical tension, a shifting global trade environment, and a growing sense that ‘uncertainty’ is no longer a phase but a baseline condition. 

And yet, if 2025 has taught us anything, it is that resilience is not a slogan, it is a capability. It is built through knowledge, relationships, and the courage to keep adapting.

That is precisely where FINAT’s role has felt both more demanding and more meaningful this year. In times like these, an industry needs more than a calendar of events. It needs a trusted source of insight, a platform where competitors can still cooperate on pre-competitive priorities, and a clear, credible voice on topics that shape our sector’s long-term viability. This is what FINAT exists to be: a knowledge hub, a collaboration engine, and a representative of shared interests—especially when the outside world becomes noisier and less predictable. 

But there is a fourth element that deserves to be stated plainly: capability building through education. When markets are volatile and regulation complex, the difference between reacting and leading is often competence—having enough people, with the right skills, at the right time. Turning information into practical understanding, and understanding into better decisions, is increasingly strategic for our members and for the wider value chain

A strategy that came of age and a structure that started to work

2025 was also the year in which our 4-Pillar strategy truly came to full maturity—not as a diagram, but as a way of working. The shift to the workstream model (Community, Knowledge, Collaboration, and Advocacy) moved from transition to traction. Through Committee Summits, bi-monthly alignment moments, and a steady rhythm of working groups and taskforces, we increasingly operated as one connected system rather than separate silos. 

The numbers tell part of the story. Over the year, FINAT delivered flagship gatherings like the European Label Forum in Amsterdam and a strong presence at Labelexpo Europe in Barcelona; hosted technical webinars and workshops; convened CELAB-Europe meetings; and sustained an impressive cadence of volunteer-driven activity across more than 50 workstreams, working groups, and taskforce meetings. 

But the bigger story is what that activity enabled: sharper prioritisation, faster learning loops, and more capacity to respond to emerging challenges without losing focus. This year, also steps were made to move education from ‘important’ to ‘actionable’. A major milestone in 2025 was the kick-off of the FINAT Academy e-learning programme.

The power of connection, in a fragmented world

If there was one moment that captured the emotional undercurrent of this year, it was Labelexpo Europe. It was a success by every visible measure, but it also carried a sense of transition, even nostalgia: the closing of a familiar chapter and the emergence of a new identity in the form of LOUPE. What stayed constant was the most important element: the connecting power of our community. In a world that increasingly rewards fragmentation, politically, economically, even digitally, our ability to keep building bridges is not ‘nice to have’; it is strategic infrastructure. 

The same applies to the association itself. 2025 brought us face-to-face with bigger questions about relevance: how our technological scope should evolve as labels intersect more with adjacent packaging solutions; how our value-chain focus should respond to circularity; and how our ‘European core’ can remain open and credible in a rebalancing global landscape. Those board-level conversations held in September and November were not a sign of doubt, but of responsibility: the willingness to confront change before change confronts us. 

Staying agile while guarding relevance

If the strategy matured in 2025, the world around it did not become simpler. Trade tensions, competitiveness pressures, and fast-moving regulation continue to reshape the playing field. Our work on PPWR implementation and related design-for-recycling developments, our effort to bring clarity on release liner positioning, and our wider engagement across the Brussels ecosystem reflect a simple reality: the industry needs both guidance and representation, not after decisions are made, but while they are being shaped. 

At the same time, competitiveness is increasingly tied to credible data and harmonised methodologies. That is why initiatives such as the Product Carbon Footprint work, technical standardisation through the Technical Handbook, and targeted research into non-European import flows are more than “projects”; they are building blocks for informed choices, fair dialogue, and future resilience. 

And crucially, they are also educational in effect: they translate complexity into practical guidance that professionals across our industry can use.

A word of thanks and a look ahead

None of this happens without people. So, at year's end, my strongest feeling, perhaps stronger than the subdued mood of the times, is gratitude. To our volunteers, workstream leaders, committee members, board, partners, and the FINAT team: thank you for showing up, again and again, with expertise, generosity, and a commitment to the collective good. 

As we step into 2026, the message is not that we have ‘arrived’, but that we have become better equipped: better structured, better connected, and clearer about our purpose. The outside world will keep shifting. Our task is to stay agile without becoming vague, to broaden our relevance without diluting our identity, and to keep turning uncertainty into informed action together. And as we do so, we will keep investing in the one resource that compounds in value: the knowledge and skills of the people who make this industry what it is.

Jules Lejeune

Managing Director