To help you keep up with the EU rulebook in 2026, I’ve put together a list of all EU legal requirements starting or ending in January.
The list gives a sense of just how fast the EU rulebook is changing. There are already 255 legal changes planned for January 2026 alone (as of 5 January, when I assembled the data).
And this number will grow: over the coming weeks, the EU institutions will adopt more legal acts, some of which will start to apply very quickly.
Most of these changes are highly technical. You will see many delegated acts and implementing acts on the list, which is normal. This month also includes a significant number of Council decisions related to sanctions.
January is usually a particularly busy month. The turn of the year is a natural moment for provisions to start or stop applying. That said, a few hundred legal changes per month is not unusual in the EU system. See the figure below, where I plot legal changes per month. I explain this dynamic in more detail here.
Next steps
Regarding the format: Yes, a table like this is far from ideal – who really wants to read through 26 pages of legal entries? I am currently working on integrating all of this data into my law tracker, where it will be much easier to search, filter and more selectively follow what matters to you. Some of the data (for legislative acts since 2019) is already available here.
Finally, a request to you: do you spot a legal change that is missing from this list? If so, please let me know. It would help me verify the data.
Fabian Bohnenberger 