EU AI Act on 2 August 2026: what applied that day, and what now applies in 2027 and 2028 after the Digital Omnibus

For two years the date everyone wrote down for the AI Act was 2 August 2026, the day Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 was to apply in full. Six days before it, Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, the Digital Omnibus on AI, entered into force and rewrote the application schedule in Article 113. Part of the Act did apply on 2 August 2026. The part most companies were preparing for did not. This page lists what applied, what moved, and where each new date is written. It is Bindler's reading; the regulations control.

What changed the schedule

Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 was adopted on 8 July 2026, published in the Official Journal on 24 July 2026 and entered into force on 27 July 2026. Point 40 of its Article 1 rewrites the third paragraph of Article 113 of the AI Act: points (a) and (c) are amended and a point (d) is added. Everything below follows from that rewrite.

What applied on or before 2 August 2026

Prohibited practices, since 2 February 2025. Chapters I and II (scope, definitions, Article 4 AI literacy, Article 5 prohibitions) apply from 2 February 2025. The Omnibus keeps that date and adds two new prohibitions in Article 5(1), points (ba) and (bb), together with new paragraphs 5(1a) and 5(1b), which apply from 2 December 2026 (Article 113, third paragraph, point (a) as replaced). General-purpose AI models, since 2 August 2025. The Chapter V duties on GPAI providers are unchanged by the Omnibus and have applied since 2 August 2025. Article 50 transparency, from 2 August 2026. The duties to tell people they are interacting with an AI system, to mark synthetic audio, image, video and text in a machine-readable way, and to disclose deep fakes and emotion recognition applied on 2 August 2026 as originally scheduled. One relief: a provider of a system that generates synthetic content and was already on the market before 2 August 2026 has until 2 December 2026 to comply with the marking duty in Article 50(2) (new Article 111(4), inserted by point 39 of Article 1 of the Omnibus: providers of such systems placed on the market before 2 August 2026 "shall take the necessary steps in order to comply with Article 50(2) by 2 December 2026"). Governance, penalties and market surveillance. The rest of the Act, including the national authorities, the AI Office's powers and the Article 99 fines, applied from 2 August 2026 under the general rule in Article 113. The Omnibus brought Articles 102 to 110 (the amendments to other EU acts) forward to 27 July 2026 (new point (d) of the third paragraph of Article 113).

So a company with a chatbot, a content generator or an emotion-recognition tool had obligations on 2 August 2026. A company with a recruitment screening system did not yet, which is the next section.

What now applies on 2 December 2027

Chapter III, Sections 1 to 3 (the classification rules, the requirements for high-risk systems, and the obligations of providers, deployers, importers and distributors) apply from 2 December 2027 for systems that are high-risk under Article 6(2) and Annex III (Article 113, third paragraph, point (c)(i) as replaced). Annex III is the list of stand-alone use cases: biometrics, critical infrastructure, education, employment, essential services including credit scoring and insurance pricing, law enforcement, migration and justice. For most small companies these are the live ones.

The date is fixed. The adopted text names the day; there is no condition attached to it.

What applies on 2 August 2028

The same sections apply from 2 August 2028 for systems that are high-risk under Article 6(1) and Annex I (point (c)(ii) as replaced). These are AI safety components of, or AI systems that are, products already covered by EU product legislation listed in Annex I, such as machinery, medical devices, lifts and vehicles, where the product needs third-party conformity assessment. The Omnibus also deletes point 1 of Annex I, Section A, so check the annex, not a 2024 copy of it.

Systems already on the market

Article 111(2), as amended, keeps the grandfathering rule but re-anchors it to the new dates: a high-risk system placed on the market or put into service before the Chapter III application date is caught only if it undergoes a significant change in design after that date. High-risk systems intended for use by public authorities must comply by 2 August 2030 regardless.

Small mid-caps

The Omnibus introduces "small mid-cap enterprises" (SMCs), defined by reference to Commission Recommendation (EU) 2025/1099, and extends to them several of the reliefs the Act gave SMEs: simplified technical documentation (Article 11), proportionate quality management (Article 17(2)), and a cap on fines at the lower of the percentage and the fixed amount (new Article 99(6a)). A company that outgrew the SME definition may now fall inside this one.

What this means for a 2026 plan

The order of work has not changed, the dates have. Classify every system first; the free EU AI Act classifier gives the risk class, the obligation set and the fine ceiling for one system in the browser. Anything in the transparency class was due on 2 August 2026. Anything in Annex III has a hard date of 2 December 2027, which is the conformity assessment, the technical file, the risk management system, the logging, the human oversight design and the EU database registration, none of which is a quarter's work. The obligations guide walks the classification tests article by article.

The EU AI Act Compliance Workbook ($39, /eu-ai-act-obligations/) holds the system inventory, the classification per system, the obligation register with the article on each line and the evidence tracker, so the December 2027 date becomes a list of dated tasks rather than a date. Team and consultancy licences are $149 and $299.

Sources

Last checked against the sources on 28 September 2026.

EU AI Act Obligations WorkbookRegister every AI system, classify it under Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, and see the duties, application date and fine ceiling per row.
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