EU AI Act answers · Deadlines
EU AI Act deadlines: the current dates
Correct as of 3 August 2026. Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, the Digital Omnibus on AI, entered into force on 27 July 2026 and rewrote Article 113 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689. Most guidance published before that date carries deadlines that are no longer correct.
ComplianceSME tracks the Act as it stands, not as it was drafted. The dates below follow Article 113 as amended. The free EU AI Act checker puts the dates that apply to your business on a printable duty card in one minute.
The timeline as it stands
| Date | What applies |
|---|---|
| 2 February 2025 | Chapters I and II. The Article 4 AI literacy duty on providers and deployers, and the Article 5 prohibited practices, including workplace emotion inference except for medical or safety reasons. Already in force. |
| 27 July 2026 | Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, the Digital Omnibus on AI, in force. |
| 2 August 2026 | General date of application, Article 113. The Article 50 transparency duties: informing people they interact with AI, machine-readable marking of synthetic audio, image, video and text, informing people exposed to emotion recognition or biometric categorisation, disclosing deep fakes. National authorities can enforce these duties with fines from this date. |
| 2 December 2026 | The new prohibitions: Article 5(1), points (ba) and (bb), and Article 5(1a) and (1b), on non-consensual intimate material and child sexual abuse material, with safeguard duties on providers. Also the end of the Article 111(4) transitional allowance for Article 50(2) marking, for systems placed on the market before 2 August 2026. |
| 2 December 2027 | High-risk requirements for AI systems classified under Article 6(2) and Annex III. |
| 2 August 2028 | High-risk requirements for AI systems classified under Article 6(1) and Annex I. |
Why so much guidance disagrees
The original text of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 set the high-risk duties running from 2 August 2026. A large body of published material was written against that text and never revised. The Digital Omnibus moved the high-risk dates back and moved two prohibitions forward, so material written before 27 July 2026 is wrong in both directions. Check the date on anything you read, including this page, which is why it carries one.
Your dates, your duties
The checker builds your duty card with the dates that bind your business. Then the EU AI Act system, B-001, carries the whole Act in one run, in your own Claude account, and the membership keeps it current when the dates move again.
Run the free checker See the EU AI Act systemMore answers: We use ChatGPT at work · The Article 4 AI literacy requirement · The penalties