Meta Retires the 25% Text Rule — For Real This Time
Meta formally sunset its image text-overlay rule — a legacy restriction that never quite made sense finally gone, with real creative room.
April 2026 Meta formally retired the image text-overlay restriction — the legacy 20%/25% text rule that hobbled creative clarity for years is deprecating from enforcement.
What you need to know
The update in four points:
- No more text-ratio download-disallow grief on ad delivery
- Text-on-image now governed by ordinary relevance quality
- Legacy-approved/flagged labels still show on old assets
- Roomier creative — but relevance standards remain
What this means for advertisers
The text rule was a 2010s idea that punished sharp, offer-driven creative for decades. Its retirement is a real creative liberation for performance accounts that write prices and offers straight onto images.
Next step
Re-test offer-led image copy (price, CTA, urgency) that previously ducked the rule. Ship a text-first variant against a clean visual and let delivery pick.
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