Guide · Updated 2026-08-25
The EU AI Act timeline after the Digital Omnibus: every deadline from 2025 to 2028
The Digital Omnibus — Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, in force since 27 July 2026 — rewrote the EU AI Act's implementation timeline. High-risk obligations moved from August 2026 to December 2027, while the transparency rules of Article 50 became enforceable on schedule. This page lists every deadline in the amended regulation, in order.
Article 5 bans apply: social scoring, manipulative techniques causing significant harm, emotion recognition in the workplace and education, untargeted facial-image scraping, predictive policing based solely on profiling, and biometric categorisation by sensitive attributes. Fines reach €35 million or 7% of global turnover. Article 4 requires every provider and deployer to ensure adequate AI literacy of their staff.
Providers of general-purpose AI models owe technical documentation, a copyright policy, and a public training-data summary (Articles 53 ff.).
Article 50 becomes enforceable: chatbots must disclose they are AI, synthetic content must carry machine-readable marking, deepfakes and AI-generated public-interest text must be visibly labelled, and persons exposed to emotion recognition must be informed. The AI Office can now fine GPAI providers up to €15 million or 3% of turnover.
Systems already on the market before August 2026 must complete machine-readable marking of AI-generated content. Safeguards for the new Article 5 prohibition on generating CSAM and non-consensual intimate imagery are also due.
The full Annex III high-risk regime applies: risk management, data governance, Annex IV technical documentation, human oversight, accuracy testing, registration, and conformity assessment for AI used in hiring, credit, education, essential services and similar areas. This deadline was originally 2 August 2026.
AI safety components of products under Annex I sectoral legislation (medical devices, machinery, vehicles) follow the product-legislation track, with the Omnibus machinery carve-out.
Primary sources: Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 in its consolidated version, Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 (Digital Omnibus), and the Commission's Article 50 Guidelines of July 2026. RegShelf tracks these sources and records every change in a public changelog.