Moving to a single UK sanctions list: what UK compliance officers need to know

If your day-to-day activities involve sanctions screening, licence checks, or suspicious activity reporting, this change matters.

On 28 January 2026, the UK is consolidating its sanctions publication into a single authoritative source - the UK Sanctions List. That means the OFSI Consolidated List and its search tool will stop being updated, identifiers used by legacy systems are being retired, and a handful of practical changes will land on your desk.

What’s changing

• From 28 January 2026, the UK Sanctions List will be the only official UK government list of sanctions designations; the OFSI Consolidated List will no longer be updated.
• The government is retiring the ‘OFSI Group ID’ for new financial sanctions designations; newly designated persons (DPs) will be identified by the UKSL’s Unique ID and Sanction Type fields instead. Historical OFSI Group IDs will be retained in published files for legacy reference purposes.
• The UK will continue to publish designation notices and will upgrade the UK Sanctions List search tool (including fuzzy searching), so user experience for manual lookups should improve.

Practical implications for daily operations

Here are the concrete ways your team will notice the change:

Screening & vendor feeds

If your screening provider or in-house engine pulls from the OFSI Consolidated List, you must switch to the UKSL feed by 28 Jan 2026. Historic OFSI Group IDs will be retained in UKSL outputs for pre-2026 DPs, but new DPs will not receive an OFSI Group ID. Update matching logic to rely on Unique ID + Sanction Type for newly designated DPs.

Matching & false positive handling

Deduplication rules may need revising: previously duplicate records coming from two published lists will disappear; however, you should keep mapping between old OFSI Group IDs and the UKSL Unique IDs for reporting purposes.

Case management and reporting

Licence applications, frozen-asset reports and suspected breach reports have historically accepted OFSI Group IDs; these historic IDs remain valid for records before 28 Jan 2026. You may want to create an internal mapping table so future reports reference the UKSL Unique ID where relevant.

Search & manual checks

The official UK Sanctions List search tool will be improved (including fuzzy search). Train your team to use that tool as the single source of truth for manual lookups.

A practical checklist to get compliant

Use the checklist below to prepare for this change and ensure that the transition is as smooth as possible.

Technical / vendor work

Inventory

List all systems, scripts and vendor feeds that currently consume OFSI Consolidated List data or rely on OFSI Group ID.

Vendor engagement

Contact screening vendors and data providers; confirm they will supply UK Sanction List feeds (and any mapping they’ll provide). Don’t assume; get dates and confirmation in writing 

Mapping & data model update (Only applicable for firms with direct integrations with the UK Sanction List)

Create a mapping table from historic OFSI Group IDs >> UKSL Unique IDs. Update code to use Unique ID + Sanction Type as the authoritative identifiers for new DPs.

Operational work

Policies, controls and processes (PCPs)

Amend your sanctions screening policy to name the UK Sanctions List (UKSL) as the single authoritative source from 28 Jan 2026 and document how historic OFSI Group IDs are handled. Update controls and processes to use the UKSL search tool and include steps for verifying Unique IDs and Sanction Types.

Training

Run short refresher sessions for screening analysts and investigators that cover: the new canonical source, changes in identifiers and where to find mapping tables.

How technology can reduce the burden

Consolidation reduces duplication at source — but your team still needs tools that:

• regularly and reliably ingest the official UKSL feeds (in your chosen format),
• maintain and surface an auditable mapping between legacy OFSI IDs and UKSL Unique IDs,
• let you tune matching rules (exact, fuzzy, name-normalisation) while keeping clear investigator workflows for false positives.

A modern screening platform integrated within your compliance workflow platform will take the painful parts off your plate: constant list refreshing and checking, format changes and mapping maintenance. That frees you to focus on high-value judgment calls, investigations and managing high-risk escalation workflows, exactly the tasks the sanctions regime expects you to get right.

Final practical reminder

This is a technical but straightforward change: the government recommends you start switching to the UK Sanctions List now, but no later than 28 January 2026, when the OFSI Consolidated List will stop being updated. Build a short project plan on how your firm will adapt to the switch, update PCPs and training, and make sure vendors confirm their sanctions support in writing. Doing that will avoid scrambling at cutover and keep your screening robust and auditable.