Richmond —

Most coverage of the 2026 session focused on HB 975 and the food-to-beverage ratio, which is fair: it is the biggest change to Virginia mixed beverage licensing in a generation. But for a lot of operators, the more consequential story of the session is the list of bills that died.

What passed

HB 975 — Food-to-beverage ratio reform. Replaced the flat 45% requirement for mixed beverage licensees with a tiered system keyed to monthly food sales. Effective July 1, 2026. Full breakdown here.

SB 444 / HB 662 — Gift card fraud. Creates a specific crime and penalty for gift card fraud, theft and forgery. This is a bigger deal for multi-location operators and hotel groups than the headline suggests; gift card balances are real liabilities, and until now the criminal exposure for draining them lived in general theft statutes.

SB 314 / HB 524 — Tourism Improvement Districts. Assessment districts that let lodging properties in a defined area fund their own destination marketing. See the correction below: HB 524 is narrower than we first described.

What didn’t

HB 962 — Predictive scheduling. Would have mandated advance-notice scheduling with penalties attached. Defeated. Predictive scheduling has passed in other states and cities and tends to come back; treat this as a delay rather than a resolution.

SB 644 / HB 930 — Whistleblower expansion. Industry groups argued the expansion would have effectively ended at-will employment in Virginia. Defeated.

HB 695 — Per-item sodium labeling. Would have required sodium disclosure per menu item. Defeated on workability grounds, which is the argument that tends to win against menu-labeling mandates in a state with a lot of independent operators.

Correction, September 2, 2026

We have since worked through VRLTA’s own 2026 Bill Tracker, dated March 4, 2026, and it corrects three things in the version of this story we first published.

HB 707 did not pass. It was continued to the next session in General Laws and Technology on February 25 by a 15-0 vote. We originally listed it among the bills that passed. Continuing it produced the outcome the industry wanted, but “continued” and “passed” are different things and we should not have conflated them. Expect the bill back.

HB 524 is narrower than we described. The tracker gives it as “Tourism improvement districts; transient occupancy tax in Arlington County,” not a statewide TID change. If you were reading this as a green light for a TID in your own locality, it is not one.

SB 644 is contested between sources. VRLTA’s session recap describes SB 644 as a whistleblower expansion. VRLTA’s own March bill tracker gives SB 644 as Surovell, “Minimum wage and overtime wages; payment, misclassification of workers, civil actions.” Those are different bills. We have not resolved which is right and we are not going to guess in either direction. Check LIS before you rely on a bill number from this story, and treat our bill tracker as the more careful record.

We are leaving the original text above rather than quietly editing it, so the correction is visible.

The pattern worth noticing

Three of the four significant defeats were labor and menu mandates, and all three are the kind of proposal that returns. The 2027 session opens in January. Operators who want a say generally have to engage in the fall, when bills are being drafted, not in February when they are being voted on.

The other pattern: the wins that passed were narrow and technical, and the ones that will matter most in five years are probably the TID changes, not the ratio reform. Ratio reform frees up individual businesses. TIDs change how whole destinations fund themselves.