The Official Clocks: What Governments Expect By 2030 And 2035

Several governments now put dates on post-quantum migration. Read side by side, they tell a consistent story: understand your cryptography and plan in the next year or two, finish the most important systems around 2030 or 2031, and complete the rest by 2035.

This article gives a planning summary as of October 2026. It does not cover every rule or sector. For the legal status, exact wording and sector rules such as PCI DSS and DORA, see Cryptography Compliance and the live Regulatory Deadline Tracker.

The Common Shape

United Kingdom. The National Cyber Security Centre asks organisations to set migration goals, complete a full discovery exercise and build an initial plan by 2028, carry out their highest-priority migrations by 2031, and finish by 2035.¹ This is guidance, aimed mainly at large organisations and critical national infrastructure operators.

European Union. The roadmap agreed by Member States through the NIS Cooperation Group sets three milestones: first steps and national roadmaps by 31 December 2026, high-risk use cases migrated by 31 December 2030, and medium-risk use cases by 31 December 2035, with low-risk ones completed as far as feasible.² It is addressed to Member States rather than directly to companies.

Canada. The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security’s roadmap for federal non-classified systems asks departments for an initial plan by April 2026, annual progress reports from then on, high-priority systems migrated by the end of 2031, and the rest by the end of 2035.³

United States. Executive Order 14412, “Securing the Nation Against Advanced Cryptographic Attacks”, signed on 22 June 2026, directs OMB to require federal agencies to move their high value assets and high impact systems to post-quantum key establishment by 31 December 2030 and to post-quantum signatures by 31 December 2031.⁴ OMB memorandum M-26-15 puts that into practice. Agencies must submit a migration plan within 120 days of 24 June 2026, which falls on 22 October 2026, and must support TLS 1.3 no later than 2 January 2030. The memo’s final phase aims to complete the remaining systems by 2035, taking account of risk and of what products are commercially available. It does not apply to national security systems.⁵

Where The Standards Fit

NIST’s draft transition report, IR 8547, proposes deprecating the weaker parameter sets of today’s public-key algorithms after 2030 and disallowing quantum-vulnerable public-key algorithms after 2035.⁶ As of October 2026 it is still an initial public draft, yet OMB requires agencies to align their plans with it. The EU roadmap also cites it when explaining its own 2035 date.²

Countdowns

The tracker entries below update daily. Each links to its source.

What This Means For Planning

The dates converge. Wherever you operate, a reasonable working assumption is that discovery and planning should be well under way by 2027 or 2028, that systems handling your most sensitive or long-lived data should be migrated by about 2030, and that the remainder should follow by 2035. The governance article explains how to turn those dates into a funded programme.