The Basel Committee's 2025–26 work programme, endorsed by the Group of Governors and Heads of Supervision and published in February 2025, sets four themes: Basel III implementation, risk assessment and safeguarding resilience, digitalisation of finance, and liquidity. Under digitalisation it commits to horizon scanning of emerging technologies, monitoring of artificial intelligence-related issues and digital fraud, finalisation of the third-party risk principles, and analytical work on ICT risk management. No AI standard is scheduled.
| Document | BCBS Work Programme 2025–26 — Basel Committee work programme and strategic priorities for 2025/26 |
| Issued by | Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) |
| Type | Report |
| Status | In force |
| Published | Feb 4, 2025 |
| Effective | Feb 4, 2025 |
| Applies to | The Committee's own policy, supervisory, and implementation agenda for 2025–26, endorsed by the Group of Governors and Heads of Supervision |
| Official source | bis.org ↗ |
| Use cases | AI governance (general) · Cybersecurity · Third-party & vendor AI |
What are the key points of BCBS Work Programme 2025–26?
- Four strategic priorities: Basel III implementation; risk assessment and safeguarding resilience; digitalisation of finance; liquidity.
- Digitalisation workstream: horizon scanning of emerging digital trends, monitoring of AI-related issues, cryptoasset market and standard implementation, and digital fraud from a prudential perspective.
- Delivered items: final Principles for the Sound Management of Third-Party Risk (10 December 2025) and the ICT risk-management range-of-practices report (2 June 2026).
- November 2025 meeting added monitoring of 'recent artificial intelligence use cases by banks' and a consultation on machine-readable Pillar 3 disclosure data.
- May 2026 meeting recorded the Committee's view that frontier AI models may materially change the speed and scale of cyber incidents.
- Approach is monitoring and supervisory exchange, not standard-setting, for AI.
What did BCBS Work Programme 2025–26 change for banks?
The programme confirms that through 2026 the Basel Committee will not write AI-specific rules; banks should expect AI to be examined through the third-party, ICT, operational-resilience, and cyber channels the programme prioritises. It also signals that the Committee's next AI outputs will be observational (range-of-practice reports, newsletters) rather than binding standards.
Is the Basel Committee planning an AI standard?
Not in its 2025–26 work programme. AI is handled as a monitoring item under the digitalisation-of-finance theme, alongside cryptoassets and digital fraud.
What AI-relevant deliverables has the 2025–26 programme produced?
The December 2025 third-party risk principles, the January 2026 BCBS 239 implementation newsletter, and the June 2026 ICT risk-management report, which identifies AI/ML as an area of skills and control challenge.
| Date | Document | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Jun 2, 2026 | BCBS ICT Risk Management Report (June 2026) — Information and communication technology risk management: range of practices | Final |
| Jan 6, 2026 | BCBS 239 Implementation Newsletter (Jan 2026) — Implementation of the Principles for effective risk data aggregation and risk reporting (BCBS 239 Principles) | Final |
| Dec 10, 2025 | BCBS Third-Party Risk Principles (Dec 2025) — Principles for the sound management of third-party risk | In force |
| May 16, 2024 | BCBS Digitalisation of finance report (May 2024) — Digitalisation of finance | Final |
| Mar 16, 2022 | BCBS AI/ML Newsletter (March 2022) — Newsletter on artificial intelligence and machine learning | Final |
| Mar 31, 2021 | BCBS Principles for Operational Resilience (2021) — Principles for Operational Resilience | In force |
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