The EU AI Act applies in stages, and beyond EU borders.
The AI Act entered into force on 1 August 2024 and applies in stages through 2028. The Digital Omnibus on AI updated the timeline in July 2026.
§ 01
What the AI Act means for your organisation.
Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 takes a risk-based approach: prohibited practices, high-risk systems, transparency obligations and minimal-risk systems.
It applies to providers placing AI systems on the EU market wherever they are established, and to providers and deployers outside the EU when the system’s output is used in the Union (Article 2).
UK, US, Asian and Middle Eastern groups serving EU customers therefore start from the same question: which systems are in use, and in which category they fall.
- Inventory of AI systems in use, in development and procured
- Classification under the regulation
- Technical documentation and risk management
- Internal roles and staff AI literacy
§ 02
Application dates, updated for 2026.
Dates of Article 113 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, as amended by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 of 8 July 2026 (Digital Omnibus on AI), in force since 27 July 2026.
- 1 August 2024
- Entry into force of the regulation.
- 2 February 2025
- Chapters I and II: definitions, AI literacy and prohibited practices.
- 2 August 2025
- Governance, general-purpose AI (GPAI) models and penalties.
- 2 August 2026
- General application, including the Article 50 transparency obligations.
- 2 December 2026
- Marking of synthetic content (Art. 50(2)) for generative systems placed on the market before 2 August 2026; new prohibitions added by the Omnibus.
- 2 December 2027
- Obligations for Annex III high-risk systems: biometrics, critical infrastructure, education, employment, essential services.
- 2 August 2028
- Obligations for Annex I high-risk systems embedded in regulated products such as machinery, medical devices and toys.
This summary is for information. The binding reference is the text published in the Official Journal of the European Union, read together with your legal counsel.
§ 03
A compliance path in five steps.
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Mapping
Inventory of AI systems in use, in development and under evaluation, with their classification.
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Gap analysis
Current state compared with the obligations that apply to each system.
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Plan
Documentation, governance and processes, with owners and deadlines aligned to the timeline.
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Implementation
Support to legal, IT and business teams throughout the work.
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Monitoring
Periodic updates as the regulation, guidelines and technical standards evolve.
§ 04
Where to continue.
- AI Strategy The four domains of the work: Enterprise AI, Generative AI, Agentic AI and AI Governance.
- AI in London EU AI Act questions for UK groups serving EU customers.
- Method Listen, map, execute, measure: the four phases of every programme.
- Contact Email, operations office phone and audit call booking.