A major programme called Registry Standardisation is underway at Nominet. This will change how registrars and registrants engage with .UK and modernises many of our services and policies to bring them closer to industry standards.
By updating our services and policies we are creating a solid, secure base for the future of .UK – improving efficiency of .UK services and enabling registrars’ greater control of the full domain lifecycle.
We have been extensively consulting with Nominet members and registrars on the changes since 2022 when the initial proposals were outlined.
In 2025, we opened a consultation on proposed changes to our policies, enabling .UK Stakeholders to offer their feedback. Following the open consultation, we reviewed all submitted feedback carefully and made changes to the published policies accordingly. You can read a summary of the key changes here. We published our revised policies & agreements on Thursday, 9th April 2026 – these confirmed policies and agreements will come into effect on the transition date following formal notice (existing policies & agreements continue to apply until then).
As we move closer to announcing a formal date for transition, we are working on a programme that will raise awareness of the changes and how to get ready for them. Ahead of the transition, we’ll make sure registrars have the support and clarity they need to feel confident and well prepared.
Registrars will have six months’ notice for the exact transition date and we will continue to provide guidance on all changes and up-to-date information though our Registrar Resources website.
To ensure registrars receive the latest updates on Standardisation, we recommend ensuring your mailing preference details are correct on Online Services.
To help registrars prepare their business for our new .UK systems, we are deploying our second release to the Testbed on Tuesday, 21st April 2026. This is a secure environment to safely test domain operations without affecting the production .UK registry. More information about the upcoming Testbed release and the latest updates will be emailed to registrars when it goes live.
We know that any updates or improvements to our services will require changes to yours – so thank you to members and registrars for their continued support.
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