The AI Act timeline: what to do before each deadline

Two things are already required. Make sure you are well clear of the Article 5 banned uses, and give your people basic AI literacy. A short policy and some role-based guidance covers most of the literacy duty.

This is the lightest milestone and the one most businesses can satisfy quickly, so there is no reason to leave it open.

The obligations on general-purpose AI models took effect here, but they fall on the model providers, not on you as a user. As a deployer, the useful step is simply to note which of your tools are built on general-purpose models.

Your own duties still come from how you use each tool, so this milestone is mostly about awareness rather than action.

By 2 August 2026 the Article 50 transparency duties apply, and the Article 4 AI literacy expectation is already in force. Tell people when they are dealing with AI, label AI-generated content where required, and give your team a basic level of AI literacy.

For most SMBs this is the first hard date to plan around. It is lighter work than the high-risk duties, but it is real, so get your notices and a short literacy policy in place.

The core high-risk deployer obligations apply from 2 December 2027, postponed from 2 August 2026 by the 2026 Digital Omnibus. Classify your uses, and for anything that lands in Annex III handle human oversight, records, risk management, and the documents the Act asks for. High-risk systems embedded in already-regulated products follow later, on 2 August 2028.

This is where most of the work sits, so start well ahead. The later date is more runway, not a reason to wait, because classification and documentation take time to get right.

The worst plan is to wait for a date and then scramble. Build your inventory now, classify your uses, and work the duties down steadily over the time you have. Spread out, the work is light; compressed into the final weeks, it is not.

The deadlines page tracks the dates with a live countdown; this guide is what to do between them. Veillo's roadmap turns the dates into the specific duties that apply to your systems.