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Digital Omnibus on AI
Also known as: Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 · AI Omnibus · Digital Omnibus
Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, the 2026 law that amended the EU AI Act. It deferred the high-risk obligations to December 2027 and August 2028, softened the AI literacy duty, added two prohibited practices, and extended documentation concessions to small mid-cap companies.
- EU AI Act
- Digital Omnibus
- Regulation 2026/1744
- high-risk deadlines
- AI literacy
What it changed
- High-risk deadlines: Annex III systems from 2 December 2027 (was 2 August 2026), Annex I systems from 2 August 2028 (was 2 August 2027).
- AI literacy: from ensuring a sufficient level to taking measures to support it.
- Two new prohibited practices from 2 December 2026.
- A narrower definition of a product's safety component, and a wider legal basis for processing special category data to detect and correct bias.
- Simplified documentation for small mid-cap enterprises as well as SMEs.
- National regulatory sandboxes due by 2 August 2027, and stronger AI Office powers.
What it did not change
The general-purpose AI obligations and the Article 50 transparency duties kept their dates, and the original eight prohibitions and the literacy duty still apply. The Omnibus moved deadlines; it did not remove obligations. An organisation that paused its high-risk preparation in 2026 has less time than the new dates suggest, because conformity assessment is slow, and stopping is the register's AI system lifecycle controls gap.
Timeline
Proposed by the European Commission in November 2025, published in the Official Journal on 24 July 2026 and in force from 27 July 2026. The full post-Omnibus timeline is in the EU AI Act entry, and the classification work it defers is described under high-risk AI system.
Sources
Related Terms
AI Office
The European Commission body that supervises general-purpose AI models under the EU AI Act and coordinates the Act's enforcement with national authorities. Its powers to enforce the GPAI obligations, including fines, have applied since 2 August 2026.
AI Regulatory Sandbox
A controlled environment in which a firm can develop or test an AI system under a regulator's supervision, with guidance on how the rules apply. The EU AI Act requires every member state to have at least one by 2 August 2027; in the UK, the FCA runs AI-specific testing schemes.
Prohibited AI Practices
The uses of AI that Article 5 of the EU AI Act bans outright. Eight have applied since 2 February 2025, and the 2026 Digital Omnibus adds two more from 2 December 2026: systems that create non-consensual intimate material and systems that generate child sexual abuse material.
EU AI Act
The European Union's regulation of AI systems by risk category, in force since 1 August 2024 and applying in stages. As of October 2026 the prohibitions, the AI literacy duty, the general-purpose model obligations and the Article 50 transparency duties all apply. The 2026 Digital Omnibus, Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, deferred the high-risk obligations to December 2027 and August 2028, softened the literacy duty and added two prohibitions. It reaches any organisation whose AI output is used in the EU, wherever the organisation sits.
AI Literacy
The skills, knowledge and understanding that let a person use, oversee or be affected by an AI system with an informed view of what it can do, where it fails and what it means for them. Article 4 of the EU AI Act has required providers and deployers to act on it since 2 February 2025; since the 2026 Digital Omnibus the duty is to take measures to support AI literacy among their staff, rather than to ensure a sufficient level of it.
High-Risk AI System
An AI system that the EU AI Act subjects to its full set of requirements, either because it is a safety component of a product covered by EU product law (Annex I) or because it is used in one of eight listed areas (Annex III), which include credit scoring and life and health insurance pricing. Since the 2026 Digital Omnibus the obligations apply from 2 December 2027 for Annex III systems and 2 August 2028 for Annex I systems.