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EU AI Act timeline: what applies now, and the dates that moved in 2026
Most timelines of the EU AI Act still carry the dates from the text published in July 2024. Those are no longer the dates in force. Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 replaced Article 113, and the consolidated text that took effect on 27 July 2026 moved the high-risk rules back.
The dates in force
| What | Applies from |
|---|---|
| Chapters I and II, including AI literacy and most prohibited practices | 2 February 2025 |
| Chapter III Section 4, Chapters V, VII and XII, and Article 78, except Article 101 | 2 August 2025 |
| Articles 102 to 110 | 27 July 2026 |
| The regulation in general, including the Article 50 transparency duties | 2 August 2026 |
| Article 5(1), first subparagraph, points (ba) and (bb), and Article 5(1a) and (1b) | 2 December 2026 |
| High-risk rules for systems listed in Annex III (employment, credit, education and others) | 2 December 2027 |
| High-risk rules for AI in products covered by Annex I | 2 August 2028 |
The verified dates and the text they are quoted from.
What that means for a company using AI today
Three things already apply and are easy to overlook because they are not about high-risk systems:
- AI literacy. Providers and deployers must take measures to support the AI literacy of the people who work with their systems. More on Article 4.
- Prohibited practices. Among others, inferring the emotions of people at work or in education, except for medical or safety reasons. More on the workplace ban.
- Transparency. Chatbots, deep fakes and some AI-generated text need disclosure since 2 August 2026. More on Article 50.
The later dates for high-risk systems are not a reason to wait. A system that ranks candidates or allocates shifts will be high-risk on 2 December 2027 whether or not anyone wrote it down in 2026, and the deployer duties then start on that day, not after an inventory has been built.
Where this fits
The AI Act File is built around the idea that the AI Act asks for a file, not a certificate: an inventory, the decision behind each use, and a trigger that reopens it. The timeline above is the reason to start that file before the high-risk dates, not on them.