The Digital Omnibus on AI entered into force on 27 July 2026, six days before the original high-risk deadline. Annex III high-risk obligations now apply from 2 December 2027 and Annex I from 2 August 2028. This page records what moved, what did not, and what binds a deployer today. The legislative passage is closed and is kept below as the record.
The Omnibus followed the ordinary legislative procedure under Article 294 TFEU. Six stages, from the Commission proposal on 19 November 2025 to entry into force on 27 July 2026. This section is now the record of a closed file.
The European Commission presented COM(2025) 836, the Digital Omnibus on AI, a targeted amendment to Regulation (EU) 2024/1689. It proposed linking the application of the high-risk rules to the availability of harmonised standards and supporting tools, with a backstop of 2 December 2027 for stand-alone high-risk AI systems and 2 August 2028 for high-risk AI embedded in products. It travelled alongside COM(2025) 834, the broader Digital Omnibus touching the GDPR, the Data Act and NIS 2.
The Council adopted a general approach and the European Parliament adopted a negotiating mandate on the basis of a joint IMCO and LIBE committee position. Both broadly accepted a deferral of the stand-alone high-risk obligations. We previously published specific committee and plenary dates for this stage. They could not be confirmed against a Council or Parliament document on 17 August 2026 and have been withdrawn rather than restated.
Council and Parliament negotiators reached a provisional political agreement. The open question through the negotiation had been whether the new dates would be fixed or conditional on standards being ready. The co-legislators settled it by fixing them: 2 December 2027 and 2 August 2028, not "the later of these dates or the arrival of standards".
The Parliament approved the agreed text in plenary, together with the new prohibition on AI systems that generate child sexual abuse material or that depict an identifiable person's intimate parts without consent. Systems already on the market have until 2 December 2026 to comply with that prohibition.
The Council gave final approval to the regulation simplifying the implementation of the harmonised rules on artificial intelligence. This was the last legislative act required before publication in the Official Journal.
The amending act is Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, published at OJ L, 2026/1744 on 24 July 2026 and in force on the third day after publication, 27 July 2026, six days before the original 2 August 2026 high-risk deadline. Anyone who planned on the original date being reached is not in breach; the obligations simply have not started. Anyone who stood down a compliance programme on the assumption of an 18 month reprieve should read the matrix below, because four sets of duties were never in scope of the deferral.
Each row shows the date the AI Act originally set, the date that now applies after the Omnibus, and how the provision came out. Colour coding: amber for moved, green for unchanged, grey where a detail could not be confirmed at an institutional source. Click any column header to sort. Use the filter buttons to narrow the view.
| Provision | Original date | Proposed new date | Status | Council | Parliament | Outcome | Notes | Source |
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The deferral moved two things: Annex III and Annex I. Everything below was outside its scope and is in application today, enforceable today. This is the list an operator most often gets wrong, because the headline said the AI Act was delayed by 18 months and it was not: one part of it was.
The legislative watch is over. What replaces it is a compliance calendar. Every date below is set by the AI Act as amended, verified against the Commission's own implementation timeline on 17 August 2026.
A note on the gap. The distance between now and 2 December 2027 is 16 months, and the honest reading of that is not that the work went away. Harmonised standards are still not published, and the deferral exists because they are not. An operator who uses the 16 months to build the operator file against the current text will be ready. An operator who waits for the standards will be doing the work in the last quarter of 2027 alongside everyone else.
How this tracker is maintained, sourced, and updated.
Every date on this page was read against the European Commission and the Council of the EU on 17 August 2026. A tracker that is not re-read is a liability, and this one had been running on April 2026 facts. Any Official Journal entry, Commission implementation update or Member State designation triggers an ad hoc pass. The date below is the last verification, not the last text edit.
Law firm trackers and news reporting are used to find a document. They are never used to confirm one. Neither is a search engine summary, which in this subject area now reflects secondary commentary back as if it were the source.
Every date on this page was read on the website of the institution that owns it. Where we could not do that in the 17 August 2026 pass, the row says so in plain words and does not offer a number. Two rows say it: the Council and Parliament position dates in the passage record, and the amended Article 71 registration mechanics. We would rather show a gap than fill one.
No insurance carrier, AI vendor, law firm, or other commercial entity pays for inclusion, prioritisation, or framing on this tracker. Coverage decisions are made solely by the editorial team on the basis of legal materiality. This tracker is published under a CC BY 4.0 licence. You may reproduce it with attribution.