UK sanctions list consolidation

Guidance has been issued to help businesses prepare to use the UK Sanctions List as the only source for UK sanctions designations after the closure of the OFSI Consolidated List. Find out who this impacts and what action needs to be taken.

Currently, UK sanctions are published in two separate lists:

• UK Sanctions List (UKSL) which covers all sanctions under the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 (SAMLA), including financial, immigration, trade, and transport sanctions.
• Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation Consolidated List (OFSI Consolidated List) which covers only financial sanctions. 

The sanctions regime imposes extensive restrictions on dealing with designated persons. Understanding and ensuring business relationships aren’t established with those sanctioned for businesses is important generally while the regime   also forms a key component of requirements for anti-money laundering, counter terrorist and proliferation financing (collectively AML) compliance for those in the AML regulated sector.

What’s changing?

From 28 January 2026, the UK government will consolidate its sanctions designations into a single list, the UKSL. This means the OFSI Consolidated List, and its associated search tool will no longer be updated or used for compliance purposes.

This change is part of a cross-government review aimed at simplifying sanctions compliance and reducing duplication for businesses and industry.

What action is needed? 

If your firm uses the OFSI Consolidated List for sanctions screening, you’ll need to switch to the UKSL as your primary source of data no later than 28 January 2026. The UKSL is available in multiple formats (Excel, Word, HTML, XML), with new formats (CSV, PDF, TXT) being added before the end of 2025.

If you use third-party screening providers or services to carry out sanctions checking you should confirm that they’re aware of, and are adapting to, this change by updating their data sources. You should confirm their timescales to understand when the changes are taking place.

You should check that your AML policy and procedures and relevant checklists are updated to reflect the changes.

Service enhancements

A UKSL search tool is already live on gov.uk, with improvements planned to include fuzzy logic searching. Designation notices will continue to be published for all types of sanctions, not just financial ones.

Further information

Further information on the changes and impact is available in guidance published on gov.uk.