ChatGPT ads arrive in 31 European countries from 24 August 2026

Six months after launching a cautious advertising pilot in the United States, OpenAI is taking ChatGPT Ads to Europe. From 24 August 2026, ads will appear inside ChatGPT for Free and Go plan users across 31 markets, including Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Austria, Switzerland, the Benelux countries, and Scandinavia. OpenAI describes this as its largest ChatGPT Ads expansion to date, bringing the total number of countries where the format runs to 35.

Who sees ads, and who does not

The rules are straightforward. If you use ChatGPT on the Free or Go plan in one of the newly added markets, you will start seeing ads. If you pay for Plus, Pro, or Enterprise, you will not. Temporary chats are excluded, as is the ChatGPT Atlas browser and any account OpenAI believes belongs to a minor. That last determination is made using a combination of stated age, account age, times of use, and the general topics discussed.

If you want to avoid ads entirely, the relevant subscription tiers in Europe cost approximately €23 per month for Plus and €229 per month for Pro. The Go plan sits at roughly €7 per month and includes advertising.

What the ads look like

Ads appear below ChatGPT’s response, visually separated from it and labelled as “sponsored”. OpenAI says advertising does not influence the model’s answers, and the two are clearly distinguished on screen. It is a placement model rather than anything woven into the reply itself.

How OpenAI is handling GDPR

The European rollout took longer than other markets, and the reason is GDPR. Personalised advertising involves processing personal data, which requires a legal basis under EU law. Some platforms rely on “legitimate interest” to run targeted ads without asking users first. OpenAI has taken a different approach: it will ask users for consent.

Users who consent can have ads tailored using their chat history, memories, and past ad interactions. Users who do not consent still see ads, but those ads are chosen from more limited signals: the current conversation, an approximate location, and the time of day. No personalised profile is built.

On the advertiser side, privacy protections are firm. Advertisers receive only aggregate metrics such as views and clicks. They do not see chat histories, memories, names, email addresses, IP addresses, or precise locations. OpenAI is not selling customer data.

The controller for users in the European Economic Area and Switzerland is OpenAI Ireland Limited, based in Dublin. That makes the Irish Data Protection Commission the lead supervisory authority. Ad-related data processing does take place outside the EEA, relying on European Commission adequacy decisions under GDPR Article 45(1) and Standard Contractual Clauses.

The UK was the first European market to go live, on 6 June 2026. It sits outside the EU GDPR framework, which is part of why it moved ahead of the rest of the continent.

How advertisers can buy

For now, access is managed rather than self-serve. Advertisers in Europe can reach ChatGPT users through the OpenAI Ads Solutions team, agency partners, and technology partners. Self-service access through Ads Manager, OpenAI’s own campaign management platform, is expected to follow later in 2026. In the US, Ads Manager launched in beta on 5 May 2026 with cost-per-click bidding, conversion tracking including add-to-cart, sign-ups and purchases, and no minimum spend requirement.

OpenAI’s US agency partnerships include Dentsu, Omnicom Group, Publicis Groupe, and WPP. Technology partners include Adobe, Criteo, Kargo, Pacvue, and StackAdapt. European advertisers working through agency groups should expect similar access from launch.

Why OpenAI is doing this

The motivation is not complicated. OpenAI is carrying infrastructure costs that far outweigh its current revenue, and advertising is one of the more direct ways to close that gap. The company has told investors it expects $100 billion in revenue within four years. ChatGPT has passed 900 million weekly active users, with the company’s own ads team estimating that roughly 20 per cent of queries show direct commercial intent. Free users account for more than 80 per cent of ChatGPT’s more than one billion monthly users. That is the audience advertising is designed to monetise.

Sam Altman had previously opposed ads for ChatGPT. His position shifted in late 2025, and OpenAI has moved quickly since then. The first US pilot launched in February 2026, followed by Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea before the European rollout.

Anthropic has positioned its commitment to remaining ad-free as a point of competitive difference, though it remains to be seen whether that holds at scale.

What this means for you

If you use ChatGPT for free in Europe, ads are coming. The format is labelled and separated from responses, and OpenAI will ask for your consent before building a personalised ad profile. Declining consent limits targeting but does not remove ads altogether.

If ads are a problem for your workflow, the Plus plan at around €23 per month removes them. If you are already on Plus, Pro, or Enterprise, nothing changes.

If you are a marketer or advertiser, this opens up a new channel with significant reach and measurable commercial intent. The managed-buy route is the way in for now, but self-serve access through Ads Manager should follow before the end of 2026. It is worth getting familiar with the format before that opens up, because the audience is large and the targeting signals, drawn from active search-like behaviour, are different from anything available on social platforms.