If you already sell on Amazon, Shopee or Lazada and you are eyeing Europe, the first thing that will trip you up is not shipping or VAT. It is images. European marketplaces are stricter and, more importantly, less consistent than the platforms most Asian and North American sellers are used to. Zalando wants tall portrait images. bol wants square-ish product cut-outs. OTTO wants a specific minimum height. Kaufland bans text and seals outright. And since the EU's General Product Safety Regulation came into force, several of them also want photographs of your warning labels.
This guide covers the exact specifications for the five European platforms that matter most to third-party sellers in 2026, plus the compliance rules that catch people out.
The quick comparison table
| Marketplace | Minimum size | Recommended | Aspect ratio | Formats | Main image background |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zalando | 762 x 1100 px (1800 x 2600 px for designer brands) | 1801 x 2600 px | 1:1.44 portrait, fixed | JPG/JPEG only, up to 20 MB | Packshot: pure white #FFFFFF. Model shots: light grey #F1F1F1 |
| OTTO Market | 500 x 1000 px | Around 2048 px on the long side for zoom | Portrait-leaning, max 4500 px per side | JPG or PNG, RGB only | Cut-out, or light neutral (white, off-white, light grey or beige) |
| bol | 500 x 500 px | 1200 x 1200 px or larger to enable zoom | Flexible, max 6000 x 6000 px | Standard web formats, 30 KB to 10 MB | White, neutral, no visible shadows |
| Kaufland Global Marketplace | 1024 px on height or width | 2048 px or more for zoom, max 4096 px | Flexible | PNG, JPG, JPEG, WebP, TIFF, GIF, up to 10 MB | White, clear silhouette, no shadows or frames |
| Amazon EU | 1000 px on the longest side | 2000 px or more, max 10,000 px | Flexible, square preferred | JPEG preferred | Pure white RGB 255, 255, 255, product filling 85% of the frame |
Zalando: the strictest ratio in European e-commerce
Zalando is the outlier, and it is the one that forces most sellers to reshoot rather than re-crop. The platform uses a fixed 1:1.44 portrait aspect ratio, which is unusually tall. A 1000 x 1000 px square image that works perfectly on Amazon cannot simply be padded to fit, because Zalando's category teams check that the garment sits correctly within the frame.
Best practice is 1801 x 2600 px, with an absolute minimum of 762 x 1100 px. Designer brand articles have a higher floor at 1800 x 2600 px. Files must be JPG or JPEG in sRGB, up to 20 MB. PNG and WebP are not accepted.
Background colours are specified by hex code
Packshots, meaning the product photographed on its own, must sit on pure white (#FFFFFF). Model views should use a light grey or beige backdrop, with #F1F1F1 given as the best-practice value. Zalando applies its own light grey overlay for visual consistency across the catalogue, so shooting on a mid-grey or coloured backdrop will look wrong once it is live.
Minimum image counts vary by category
- Apparel, kids, lingerie, sports, most accessories: 3 compliant images, including either a front crop or a primary packshot
- Shoes, bags, jewellery: 3 compliant images, primary packshot only, no front crop
- Hosiery, socks, tights: 2 compliant images
- Beauty, toys, electronics, sports equipment: 1 primary packshot
Up to seven images are accepted per variation. Model shots must feature a real person, not a mannequin or a rendered figure, and the article must remain fully recognisable even when the body is cropped.
OTTO Market: portrait minimums and the file-name trap
OTTO is Germany's largest home-grown marketplace and its technical requirements are relatively relaxed, with one exception that catches non-German sellers repeatedly.
Images must be at least 500 x 1000 px, with a maximum side length of 4500 px. Note that the minimum is portrait, not square, so a 600 x 600 px image fails even though it clears 500 px on both sides. Aim for roughly 2048 px on the long side if you want the zoom viewer to engage. JPG and PNG are accepted, and files must be RGB. CMYK files, common if your images came from a print designer, are rejected.
The trap: file names must not contain special characters or umlauts. If your images are named Größe-M-Grün.jpg or carry accented characters from a supplier's export, the upload fails with an error that does not always say why. Rename to plain ASCII with hyphens before ingesting: sku-12345-front.jpg.
The main image should be a cut-out. If it is not, it needs a light, neutral background such as white, off-white, light grey or light beige. OTTO recommends up to ten images per product variant.
bol: the Dutch and Belgian giant
bol's technical floor is low, but its content rules are among the tightest in Europe. Images must be between 500 x 500 px and 6000 x 6000 px, and between 30 KB and 10 MB. The zoom viewer needs at least 1200 x 1200 px, which should be treated as your practical minimum.
One quirk worth knowing: white space does not count towards the pixel minimum. If you take a small product photo and pad it out to 1200 x 1200 px with white canvas, bol measures the product area, not the file. Padding will not rescue a low-resolution original.
The main image must show the front of the item, out of its packaging (board games and media carriers are excepted), on a white or neutral background with no visible shadows. It may not contain models, text, statements, logos, icons or watermarks, and it may not combine front, side and rear views into a single collage. Additional images may show different perspectives and lifestyle contexts, but must contain only the item and its accessories.
bol also prohibits discount labels, promotional wording such as "buy now" or "cheap", competitor comparisons, reviews and duplicate images. Images lifted from Google Images or from other bol listings are a copyright breach and will get the listing pulled.
Kaufland Global Marketplace: generous formats, zero tolerance for graphics
Kaufland accepts the widest range of file types of any platform here: PNG, JPG, JPEG, WebP, TIFF and GIF, up to 10 MB. Minimum resolution is 1024 px on height or width, 2048 px unlocks zoom, and the ceiling is 4096 px.
The first image must show a clear silhouette of the complete product on a white background, with no shadows, frames or excess white space. Kaufland recommends five to ten images covering different angles and details.
What Kaufland bans is a long list: symbols, emojis, unusual special characters, text, logos, flags, delivery or pricing information, official seals such as Stiftung Warentest, collages, placeholder or snapshot photos, and any promotional lettering including "Sale". If you are recycling infographic images built for Shopee or Lazada, where text overlays are normal and often expected, they will not pass here. Keep a separate, text-free image set for European channels.
Amazon EU and the GPSR label images
Amazon's core specifications in Europe match the global rules: pure white main image at RGB 255, 255, 255, product occupying at least 85% of the frame, minimum 1000 px on the longest side, 1600 px or more for reliable zoom, and a hard rejection above 10,000 px. No text, logos, watermarks or inset images on the main shot.
The European-specific layer is GPSR, the EU General Product Safety Regulation, which has applied to online offers since December 2024. Article 19 requires that every listing displays, before purchase, the manufacturer's name and contact details, the details of an EU Responsible Person where the manufacturer is outside the EU, product identification information including a picture, and any warnings or safety information in the languages of every member state where the product is sold.
In practice this means photographing your labels. On Amazon, safety images are uploaded through the compliance area of Seller Central using the naming convention ASIN.PS01 through ASIN.PS06, in JPG, giving you up to six slots for warning labels, age markings, CE marks and manual pages. These images need to be legible at typical display sizes, so shoot the label flat and square, crop tightly, and do not compress the text into mush. A 1000 px wide JPEG at high quality is far more useful than a 3000 px file saved at quality 40.
Other European marketplaces including eBay, Etsy, bol and Kaufland have introduced their own GPSR fields and will suspend listings that lack the information. Multilingual markets such as Belgium may require the same warning in more than one language, which usually means more than one label photograph.
Building one workflow for five specifications
The practical problem is that a single product now needs a 1:1.44 portrait set for Zalando, a portrait-minimum set for OTTO, a square set at 1200 px or more for bol, a 2048 px set for Kaufland and a square set for Amazon, all derived from the same shoot. Reshooting per channel is not viable at any real catalogue size.
Shoot once, as large as your camera allows, in sRGB, with generous framing so that a taller crop is still possible. Then derive each channel's set from that master. A batch resizer such as PixelPrep handles the mechanical part, producing the different dimensions, aspect ratios and file sizes from one upload so you are not manually exporting five versions of every SKU.
Pre-upload checklist
- Master files shot in sRGB, at least 2600 px on the long side, with framing that survives a 1:1.44 crop
- Text-free main images for every European channel, kept separate from any Shopee or Lazada infographic set
- Zalando: JPG only, exact 1:1.44 ratio, #FFFFFF packshots and #F1F1F1 model shots, correct image count for the category
- OTTO: minimum 500 x 1000 px, RGB not CMYK, file names in plain ASCII with no umlauts or special characters
- bol: at least 1200 x 1200 px of actual product, not padded canvas, front view only on the main image, no shadows
- Kaufland: 2048 px or more, no seals, badges, flags or promotional lettering anywhere in the set
- Amazon EU: pure white, 85% frame fill, plus GPSR label photographs uploaded as ASIN.PS01 to PS06
- Warning and safety labels photographed flat, cropped tight and saved at high quality, in every required language
Europe rewards sellers who treat images as a compliance asset rather than a creative one. Get the specifications right once, build the derivation step into your listing workflow, and expansion into five marketplaces stops being five separate photography projects.