On 1 January 2026, Global Accreditation Cooperation Incorporated commenced full operations and launched its own Multilateral Recognition Arrangement. The International Accreditation Forum ceased operations the same day. The two marks that have appeared on accredited calibration certificates and test reports for years, the IAF MLA Mark and the ILAC MRA Mark, are being replaced by a single Global ACI MRA Mark.

Most summaries of this change quote a deadline of 1 January 2029. That date comes from a letter written before the transition happened, and the rule now in force works differently. The difference decides what a quality manager actually does about it.

Where the 2029 date came from

The joint IAF and ILAC communication to regulators, Version 4, dated 17 December 2024, described the plan while it was still a plan. It set the Transition Date as "provisionally January 2026" and then said:

"It is anticipated that the date on which the IAF MLA Mark and the ILAC MRA mark will no longer be able to be used will be 3 years after the Transition Date."

Three years after 1 January 2026 is 1 January 2029, and that arithmetic is how the date entered circulation. The word carrying it is anticipated, in a document written thirteen months before the arrangement it describes took effect.

What the rule says now

The Cooperation's own launch announcement, published after the transition, states that the old marks "will remain valid for as long as required until full adoption of the Global Accreditation Cooperation Incorporated new mark." It gives no date.

The Cooperation's FAQ explains why:

"A single global date is not practical or legally reliable because trademark registration timelines differ by economy."

A mark is a registered trademark, and registration happens jurisdiction by jurisdiction. The Cooperation can forbid the old marks in an economy only once its own mark is legally available there, so the transition is governed by two conditions rather than by a calendar. The conditions of use are set out in MRA-006, Annex 1, and the FAQ summarises the trigger:

"Once the Secretariat notifies that the Global ACI MRA Mark is legally available in your economy: new accreditations, renewals, re-issuances, amended or administratively replaced accreditation documents must use the Global ACI MRA Mark, and the IAF MLA Mark and ILAC MRA Mark may no longer be used for forward accreditation actions."

After that notice, using an old mark on any of those forward actions "constitutes a nonconformance."

Two things follow. The date is local, and it arrives as a notice from the Secretariat rather than as a global switch. And the event that trips the change is a forward accreditation action, so a laboratory's transition is paced by its own renewal and re-issue cycle.

The certificates already in the drawer

They stay as they are. The FAQ is explicit:

"Accreditation certificates or documents issued without a fixed expiry date may remain valid in their existing form until an administrative action occurs, such as: renewal, re-issue, scope extension or reduction, or changes affecting the accredited legal entity."

Recognition of accredited results also continues across the change. The IAF MLA and the ILAC MRA are, in the words of the regulators' letter, "subsumed into the Cooperation's Mutual Recognition Arrangement (MRA), with recognition of existing accredited conformity assessment results continuing without interruption."

The old marks retain legal force in the meantime for a specific reason. The same letter records that IAF and ILAC "will become non-operational from the Transition Date but will remain in existence for a period of time to enable, amongst other things, the ongoing management and protection of the IAF MLA Mark and the ILAC MRA Mark," and will be wound up only once that protection is no longer needed. The organisations that hold the trademarks are staying alive to keep them enforceable through the changeover.

What an accredited body does

Authorisation runs through the accreditation body, and it is an approval step rather than a file swap. Per the FAQ, an accredited body obtains its accreditation body's authorisation, submits examples of its intended mark usage, accepts the conditions of use, and receives approval before it may apply the Global ACI MRA Mark.

For a laboratory the sequence is: watch for the Secretariat's notice in your economy, seek authorisation from your accreditation body, and apply the new mark from your next forward accreditation action.

What a shop that buys calibration does

Readers on the other side of the transaction send gauges out and receive certificates back, and their questions are narrower.

Certificates already on file remain valid and need no action. Certificates arriving over the next few years may carry either mark, and both are legitimate, because the Cooperation "will recognize the ongoing use of the IAF MLA Mark and the ILAC MRA Mark as if their own and as equivalent to the Cooperation's MRA Mark." An internal procedure or supplier checklist that names the ILAC MRA Mark by name will need editing eventually, and that edit is cheaper to schedule than to discover during an audit.

A calendar entry for January 2029 would be the wrong instrument. The event to watch is the notice in your own economy, and it reaches a shop through its laboratory: on the certificate returned from the first calibration after that laboratory transitions.

The part that generalises

An accreditation mark on a calibration certificate is a statement about the arrangement in force on the day that certificate was issued. It describes that day rather than today. That is why the FAQ leaves existing documents alone in their existing form and moves only on forward actions, and it is the right reading of what such a document is.

The same logic governs any register of instruments and their certificates. A record describes the moment it was made. Restamping a 2024 certificate with a 2026 mark would produce a document that is tidier and less true, and a system that quietly normalises historical records to current conventions destroys the evidence an auditor came to see.

Disclosure: SVEND publishes software that keeps a register of measuring instruments and the calibration certificates issued against them. This article reports a change made by the accreditation bodies and describes no SVEND feature.

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