The month in one line

ISO 9001:2015 was withdrawn on the day the 2026 edition published, and the document that sets your transition deadline does not exist yet

Both halves of that are checkable, and both are below with the stage codes and the resolution number. The gap between them is where the guesswork is coming from.

Item one

ISO 9001:2026 is published, and 2015 is already gone

ISO 9001:2026, sixth edition, is at ISO stage 60.60 — International Standard published — dated 16 September 2026.

ISO 9001:2015 is at stage 95.99 — Withdrawal of International Standard — dated 16 September 2026. The same day.

ISO treats withdrawal and replacement as the same event; the 2015 catalogue entry records both, at 95.99 and as superseded by the 2026 edition. What it does not record is a period during which the 2015 edition stays current. It is not being phased out, and it is not the standard any longer.

Your certificate is a separate question, and ISO’s own page says so — it directs certified organizations to their certification body for transition arrangements. Item two is about what those arrangements rest on.

This is the second time in five months. ISO 14001:2015 went to 95.99 on 15 April 2026. Same code, same day-of-publication timing, same consequence for anyone whose checklists carry clause numbers.

What ISO itself names as changed

The standard’s own foreword states six main changes, and the sixth edition also incorporates Amendment 1:2024:

• Core ISO management system terms and definitions brought into Clause 3. ISO 9000 remains the normative reference for the rest.
• Quality culture and ethical behaviour introduced into the requirements, particularly around leadership, awareness, and the environment for the operation of processes.
• Risks and opportunities separated, with actions to address each considered separately.
• Management of change strengthened — the requirements on changes to the quality management system reinforced.
• Annex A revised to give enhanced clarification of structure, terminology and intent, as informative text introducing no new requirements.
• Annex B removed.

ISO’s own announcement adds one more: the sixth edition adopts the latest harmonized structure common to ISO management system standards.

What that means structurally

One of those is renumbering, and renumbering is what breaks documents.

Risks and opportunities are now separated on the page. Where the 2015 edition ran them together under a single 6.1, the 2026 edition carries 6.1.1 Determining risks and opportunities, 6.1.2 Actions to address risks, and 6.1.3 Actions to address opportunities. An organization that has been treating opportunity as the optional half of a risk register now has a clause pointed at it.

Clause 6.3, Planning of changes, is not new — it carried the same number in the 2015 edition, and what the 2026 edition did was reinforce it. The change is on the environmental side: ISO 14001:2026 gained a 6.3 with the same title in April, where the 2015 edition had none. For the first time both standards handle planned change at the same clause number, which is the one piece of good news in this issue for anyone running an integrated system.

Every procedure, form, register and audit checklist that cites a 2015 clause number needs checking against the new numbering. None of it is difficult. All of it is finite. It is almost always found later than it should be.

Item three

A scheme anchored to a date that does not exist

Issue 01 made the point that a sector scheme cannot keep pointing at a superseded edition of the standard underneath it, and that IATF 16949 was waiting on ISO 9001. ISO 9001 has now published. Here is where that went.

IATF Stakeholder Communiqué SC-2026-005, issued July 2026, states that the second edition of IATF 16949 is planned for publication in mid-2027, and that the end of its transition time will be aligned with the end of the ISO 9001 transition.

Read those two items together. IATF has anchored its transition end to the end of an ISO 9001 transition that has not been set. That is a reasonable thing for IATF to do — it is the only sensible anchor available — but if you hold IATF 16949 it means your automotive deadline is now downstream of a date nobody has published, one step removed.

The communiqué names five priorities for the revision: simplification and ease of audit; software quality assurance for embedded software across its lifecycle; Tier N supply chain management on a risk basis; launch management; and better handling of customer-specific requirements, with the possibility of common CSRs moving into the standard itself.

That last one is worth watching. If common customer-specific requirements migrate into the standard, they stop being contractual and become auditable.

Item four

The Global ACI mark, as promised

Issue 01 said this brief would report whether the mark authorization decision landed on schedule. It has not, and there is a reason.

Global ACI’s published position is that no notification to Full Members, and no authorisation for use of the Global ACI MRA Mark, shall be made before a formal decision at the MRAC meeting in October 2026. Full Members are not currently authorised to use the mark in any economy.

Authorization is also not a single global switch. It follows legal availability of the mark economy by economy — trademark opposition periods expiring, objections resolved — and then formal notification from the Secretariat. Once that notification issues in your economy, continued use of the old IAF or ILAC mark on new, renewed, reissued or amended accreditation documents becomes a nonconformance. Accreditation documents issued without a fixed expiry date may remain valid in their existing form until an administrative action occurs — renewal, re-issue, a scope change, or a change to the accredited legal entity.

Item five

OSHA hazard communication: the date in front of you is 20 November, and one official page still shows the old one

Away from ISO entirely, and on a much shorter fuse.

OSHA published its updated Hazard Communication Standard on 20 May 2024 at 89 FR 44144, effective 19 July 2024, aligning 29 CFR 1910.1200 primarily with Revision 7 of the GHS. A final rule published 15 January 2026 at 91 FR 1695 then moved every compliance date back four months.

The guidance OSHA was waiting on has landed

The extension was granted because OSHA’s own compliance guidance was not ready. It is now. The agency’s Questions and Answers document for the 2024 update has been published, and its compliance-date table carries the post-extension dates. More consequentially, the inspection directive — CPL 02-02-079 — took effect 19 May 2026, cancelling the directive that had governed HazCom inspections since 2015. Anyone still describing the 2024 rule as “not yet enforced” is describing the position as it stood in January.

What the directive tells inspectors: during the transition period an employer may comply with HCS 2012, with HCS 2024, or with both, and is not cited for choosing — unless it complies with neither. That is the whole of the latitude. It is not a grace period, and it ends on your applicable date.

What 20 November actually requires

Narrower than the summaries suggest. By that date, for substances, all employers shall, as necessary, update any alternative workplace labeling used under paragraph (f)(6), update the hazard communication program required by (h)(1), and provide additional employee training under (h)(3) for newly identified physical hazards, health hazards or other hazards.

Three things follow. It is triggered by what is newly identified, not by the calendar alone. It reaches in-plant labeling under (f)(6), not shipped container labels — those were the manufacturer’s obligation and were due in May. And it is owed at every site; the duty does not discharge at corporate level.

Two things that catch people out

Your safety data sheet library holds two editions. Paragraph (j)(4) permits manufacturers, importers, distributors and employers to comply with the updated section, or with 1910.1200 as revised 1 July 2023, or both, from 20 May 2024 until their own applicable date. Nothing on a document tells you which edition you are holding.

EPCRA changes too, on a different deadline. An EPA rule published 22 June 2026 at 91 FR 37022, effective 21 August 2026, replaces the 24 EPCRA hazard categories with all 118 OSHA hazard categories and subcategories. Compliance date 1 January 2028; first reporting year 2027, filed by 1 March 2028. Your Tier II report changes, through a different agency, on a third calendar.

If you operate in a State Plan state, there is a fourth. State Plans with their own hazard communication standards must adopt provisions at least as effective as the final rule. What binds you is the text your state actually adopted, so check it rather than assuming it matches the federal version line for line.

Next issue

November

The requirement in the 2024 HazCom rule that will actually cost manufacturers money: classification for reaction products of known or reasonably anticipated downstream uses, how far OSHA says that reaches, and the four limits the agency has put on it. Plus whether the Global ACI mark decision landed in October, and whether anyone has published an ISO 9001 transition period.