ISO 9001:2026

ISO 9001:2026 is the new edition of the world's most widely used quality management standard. It replaces ISO 9001:2015 and the climate change amendment added to it in 2024. If your organisation is certified to ISO 9001, or working towards it, you now need to plan a move to the new edition. This page explains what changed, what it means for a working system, and how to approach the transition.

Revision, not reinvention

ISO 9001 has always changed gradually. The 2026 edition keeps the Harmonized Structure that ISO uses for all its management system standards: context, leadership, planning, support, operation, performance evaluation and improvement. That means the shape of a well-run ISO 9001:2015 system still fits. The processes you have built for context, risk, objectives, control of operations, internal audit, management review and corrective action remain the backbone of the system.

What changes is the detail within the clauses. The climate change requirement introduced by Amendment 1:2024 carries into the new edition: you still have to decide whether climate change is a relevant issue and consider related requirements of interested parties. Beyond that, the changes mostly make explicit what auditors already looked for in a mature system, and add a handful of requirements that genuinely are new.

Work from the published standard itself, not from summaries, including this one. The exact wording is what your certification body will audit against, and small changes in wording can change what evidence you need.

What the 2026 edition adds and strengthens

The changes cluster into eight areas. Most of them are about doing something visibly, rather than doing something different.

Interested-party requirements (4.2). You now have to determine explicitly which relevant interested-party requirements your quality management system needs to address. A list of interested parties is no longer enough on its own; the link from their requirements to your system has to be there.

Quality culture and ethical behaviour (5.1.1, 7.3). Top management must actively promote a culture that supports meeting quality requirements, and promote ethical behaviour in decisions and activities affecting quality. They must also encourage people to identify opportunities, not just report risks. People working under your control must be aware of what that culture and behaviour mean in their own work. This is the most genuinely new part of the edition, and a policy statement on its own will not satisfy it.

Risks and opportunities (6.1.2, 6.1.3). Risks must now be analysed and evaluated, not merely identified, and the actions taken must be proportionate to their potential effect on the intended results of the whole system, not just on product conformity. Opportunities get their own dedicated requirements for the first time: identify them, analyse and evaluate them, plan suitable actions, build those actions into your processes, and decide how you will check they worked. If your risk register has an empty or decorative "opportunities" column, this is where the work is.

Planning changes (6.3). When you plan a change to the system, you must consider what information is needed to carry it out, what has to be communicated and to whom, how you will monitor whether it is working, how you will evaluate whether it achieved what you wanted, and how the results will be reviewed. Note the wording: the requirement is to consider these things, not to produce a formal plan and report for every change.

Organisational knowledge (7.1.6). The stated purpose is broader: knowledge needed to achieve the intended results of the system, not only to operate its processes. Retaining knowledge, sharing it with the people who need it, and actually applying it are all explicit. Knowledge sitting in a folder nobody opens does not meet this.

Customer communication, design and operational control (8.2 to 8.5). Several changes: customer communication arrangements must cover contingency actions, including disruption to supply or delivery; requirement-review records must cover new and changed requirements, not just the original order; changes to requirements must be communicated to the interested parties affected, which can include suppliers and contractors as well as customers; design planning must consider whether parties beyond the customer need to be involved, and design outputs must carry the information essential for intended purpose and safe, proper provision; external providers must be told how to interact with your customers and other interested parties; requirements for verifying or validating a provider's work away from their premises must be communicated; and documented instructions needed for controlled delivery must actually be used, not merely available.

Internal audit and performance evaluation (9.1 to 9.3). Each internal audit now needs a defined objective as well as a scope and criteria. Management review must consider changes in relevant interested-party needs and expectations. The effectiveness of actions taken on risks, and the effectiveness of actions taken on opportunities, are now listed separately, both as things to evaluate and as management review inputs, so a single line saying "actions completed" will not cover it.

Continual improvement (10.1). The improvement requirements are consolidated and clarified rather than replaced: use your performance information and management review results to find improvement opportunities and act on them, including for future needs and expectations.

Read that list and the pattern is clear. Very little of it demands a new process. Most of it demands that an existing process be visible, evaluated and recorded in a way an auditor can follow.

Check where you stand

Our free ISO 9001:2026 transition readiness check turns the changes above into 32 plain-English questions, scored by topic, so you can see which areas need work before you open the standard. It takes about ten minutes, needs no signup, and your answers stay in your browser.

What the transition means for certified organisations

Existing ISO 9001:2015 certificates do not become invalid overnight. Certification bodies work to a transition period set through the accreditation system, and certificates to the old edition expire at the end of it. The practical questions to ask your certification body now are:

• When can they audit against ISO 9001:2026?
• Can the transition be done at your next surveillance or recertification audit, or does it need a separate visit?
• Will the transition affect the length of the audit?

Planning around your existing audit dates usually keeps the transition cheapest. Do not work to a deadline you have inferred from the publication date; get it from your certification body.

A practical transition plan

1. Buy the standard from ISO or your national standards body.
2. Run a gap analysis against the new edition. Go clause by clause and note what's new or changed and whether your current system already covers it. The readiness check makes a fast first pass; see our gap analysis guides for the full method.
3. Start with the areas above that are genuinely new — quality culture and ethical behaviour, and the opportunity requirements in 6.1.3 — because they need decisions from management, not just document edits.
4. Update only what needs to change. In most systems that means a handful of procedures, the quality manual if you have one, the risk and opportunity register, the management review agenda, the internal audit programme and the gap analysis itself, not a full rewrite.
5. Brief the people affected by the changes, and update training records. Awareness of the expected culture and behaviour is now itself a requirement.
6. Audit and review. Run internal audits that cover the changed requirements, with objectives stated, and hold a management review that considers the transition and the new inputs.
7. Transition audit. Your certification body checks the changes and reissues your certificate against ISO 9001:2026.

If you are not yet certified

If you are building a new system, build it to ISO 9001:2026. Certification bodies will move new certifications to the current edition, and certifying to an edition that is being phased out means doing a transition almost immediately. Check with your chosen certification body which edition it will audit against and from when.

Our ISO 9001 templates

Our ISO 9001 pack is written against ISO 9001:2026. Every manual, procedure, policy, form, register and audit checklist has been reworked for the changes above, and the pack's gap analysis checklist is built on the same edition, with the items that are new or changed in 2026 marked as such and a separate transition action plan. The combined pack covers ISO 9001:2026 together with ISO 14001:2026. See the structure in our free ISO templates, and read about running ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 together.

Guides on ISO 9001:2026 will be listed below as they are published.