Handling Saudi Arabia's Short Address Code in Adobe Commerce – What Changed in 2026 & How to Deal with It

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share something that’s been quietly causing challenges for e-commerce stores targeting Saudi Arabia since the beginning of 2026.

Saudi Post (SPL) introduced the Short Address Code — an 8-character alphanumeric code (e.g., RCTB4359) that uniquely identifies every address in the country. Think of it as a super-short version of a full street address + building number + district, all rolled into one tiny code.

What makes it specific to Saudi Arabia:

• Almost no other country uses this exact system. Some places have short postcodes (UK, Canada), but this is a national-level, mandatory, SPL-managed code tied to the full National Address database.
• It became mandatory for all parcel deliveries starting January 2026.
• If the code is missing or invalid, major carriers (Aramex, SMSA, DHL, etc.) can refuse the shipment.
• This affects e-commerce because many customers still provide vague addresses (e.g., just “Riyadh” or “near the big mosque”) — and those are no longer sufficient.

For Adobe Commerce / Magento stores serving Saudi customers, the built-in address fields + most global extensions don’t handle this well out of the box. You usually end up needing:

• Real-time autocomplete that suggests valid Short Codes while typing
• Fuzzy matching for informal/Arabic input
• Validation that forces or auto-fills the Short Code before checkout
• Fallback UX for users who don’t know their code yet

I ran into these exact issues while working on Saudi-focused stores, so I ended up building a small extension that hooks into the official SPL National Address API for autocomplete + validation + Short Code enforcement. It’s now live on the Adobe Commerce Marketplace if anyone is curious: https://commercemarketplace.adobe.com/saudi-address-pro-module-address-widget.html

I’m more interested in hearing from other developers:

• Have your Saudi (or GCC) clients started asking you to add or modify the Short Address Code field in checkout forms?
• When merchants say “We need autocomplete or validation because deliveries are failing”, what approach are you taking?
• Are you building custom fields + SPL API calls, extending existing checkout modules, or using a third-party extension?

Would love to learn what’s working (or not working) in real projects. Happy to share more technical details or code snippets if it helps anyone.

Thanks! Abdullah (Riyadh)