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Lab Journal · October 26, 2026 · 7 min read

IAF and ILAC are gone. Meet Global ACI.

The biggest governance change in laboratory accreditation in decades — and most of the internet hasn't noticed yet.

Last month we debunked a fake ISO 17025:2025 edition — a "change" that didn't exist but content farms kept selling. This post is the opposite case: a change that is completely real, verified against primary sources, that the vast majority of lab-related content still hasn't caught up with.

Here is the fact: since 1 January 2026, the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) and the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) no longer operate. Their work has been taken over by a single organisation: the Global Accreditation Cooperation Incorporated — Global ACI.

What happened, in plain terms

For decades the world ran on two international accreditation cooperations: IAF (mainly management-system certification bodies) and ILAC (mainly testing and calibration laboratories). If you've ever seen the ILAC MRA symbol on a calibration certificate, that was ILAC's mutual-recognition arrangement at work — the reason a calibration certificate from a CNAS-accredited lab in China is accepted by a regulator in Germany.

That two-body era is over:

  • December 2024: Global Accreditation Cooperation Incorporated is registered in New Zealand as a not-for-profit incorporated society.
  • 1 January 2026: Global ACI commences full operations and assumes all former activities of IAF and ILAC. IAF and ILAC become non-operational.
  • 14 April 2026: Global ACI unveils its acronym, logo and official website (global-aci.org).
  • Now: regulators and tender authorities are progressively updating their references from "IAF MLA / ILAC MRA" to the "Global ACI MRA".

China is not watching from the sidelines: CNAS (China National Accreditation Service) is among the first members of Global ACI, which now counts around 190 member organisations, and Chinese experts have already been elected to leadership positions within its committees.

One organisation, one MRA

The single most important structural change: the former ILAC MRA and IAF MLA have been subsumed into one Global ACI Multilateral Recognition Arrangement (MRA). Its scope covers everything the two old arrangements covered — and that list is worth knowing, because it shows how central this is to laboratory work:

  • ISO/IEC 17025 — testing and calibration laboratories
  • ISO 15189 — medical laboratories
  • ISO/IEC 17020 — inspection bodies
  • ISO/IEC 17021 — management-system certification bodies
  • ISO/IEC 17024 — personnel certification bodies
  • ISO/IEC 17065 — product, process and service certification bodies
  • ISO/IEC 17029 — validation and verification bodies
  • ISO/IEC 17043 — proficiency-testing providers
  • ISO 17034 — reference-material producers
  • ISO 20387 — biobanks

The regional machinery you already know — AFRAC, APAC, ARAC, EA, IAAC, SADCA — continues to operate, and peer evaluation against ISO/IEC 17011 continues as before. One organisation and one MRA sit on top; the plumbing below is unchanged.

What does NOT change (read this if you read nothing else)

If you run a laboratory, here is the part that prevents panic:

  • Your accreditation body is unchanged. CNAS, A2LA, UKAS, NVLAP, NATA, SAC-SINGLAS, NABL — same assessors, same criteria, same certificates.
  • Your existing accredited status does not lapse. Recognition of existing accredited results continues without interruption under the Global ACI MRA.
  • The ILAC MRA and IAF MLA marks remain valid during the transition. Global ACI has published transition procedures (MRA-006 and related guidance), and the anticipated end date for continued use of the old marks is 1 January 2029 — or later if necessary. Certificates and reports bearing the ILAC MRA symbol issued today are not suddenly invalid.
  • Regulations and tenders referencing IAF MLA / ILAC MRA remain in force while they are progressively updated.

In short: nothing about your day-to-day laboratory operations needs to change today. This is a governance-layer change, not a technical-requirements change. ISO/IEC 17025:2017 remains the current edition — that hasn't moved.

Why most websites still say "IAF"

Search for accreditation topics today and the overwhelming majority of articles, consultancies and even some accreditation-body legacy pages still say IAF and ILAC. Three reasons, none of them sinister:

  1. Content lag. The merger only took operational effect this year, and the recognizable "Global ACI" brand only exists since April 2026. The long tail of compliance content updates slowly.
  2. Transition wording. Because the old marks remain valid until around 2029, plenty of correct-but-stale text is still technically accurate about marks while being outdated about governance.
  3. AI content farms don't track governance changes at all — the same machine that invented "ISO 17025:2025" has no idea IAF dissolved.

For you, this is an opportunity in both directions: content that still cites "IAF" as a current organisation is now a small credibility red flag; content that correctly explains Global ACI — what changed, what didn't, and until when the old marks are valid — is immediately a cut above.

What labs and consultants should actually do

  1. Do nothing dramatic to your quality system. No document overhaul is required by the merger itself. Follow your accreditation body's own transition announcements — they will tell you exactly when and how their mark usage changes.
  2. Update how you talk about recognition. When your quality manual, supplier-audit questionnaires or tender responses describe international recognition, prefer "signatory to the Global ACI Multilateral Recognition Arrangement (Global ACI MRA)" over the old IAF MLA / ILAC MRA wording. Global ACI itself has published a model clause for exactly this.
  3. Be ready for tender and regulatory language shifts. Over the next couple of years, procurement and regulatory documents will start referencing the Global ACI MRA. Labs that already know the terminology answer assessors and customers without missing a beat.
  4. Watch the marks calendar. The old ILAC MRA / IAF MLA marks are expected to remain usable until 1 January 2029 at the earliest. When your accreditation body announces the switch to the Global ACI mark, update your report templates and letterheads then — not before.
  5. Distrust anyone selling a "Global ACI transition package". There is no lab-level transition project here — no new clause numbers, no new deadline to comply with. A consultancy packaging this as an urgent migration is selling fear, same pattern as the fake 17025 edition.

How we handled it

We updated every trace of it on this site: our coverage descriptions, diagnosis criteria and document templates now reference the Global ACI MRA framework (formerly ILAC) and the Global ACI TECH document series (which continues the former ILAC P/G-series, e.g. the calibration uncertainty policy formerly known as ILAC P14 is now Global ACI TECH-1-009). If you generate documents here, they already speak the new language — and they keep citing the old names in parentheses where your assessors still expect to see them.

Check your lab against the real standard — free

If you want to turn awareness into readiness: our free readiness checker maps your lab against ISO/IEC 17025:2017 clause by clause — with the Global ACI general layer built in, plus CNAS, A2LA, UKAS, NVLAP, NATA, SINGLAS and NABL specifics on top. No signup; everything runs in your browser.

→ Run the free check — and if you need documents drafted or reviewed to the same alignment, the document generator and conformity review speak Global ACI natively.

Fact-check appendix (verified 2026-10-26 against primary sources): Global ACI press release "Global Accreditation Cooperation Incorporated Launch" (global-aci.org) — full operations commenced 1 January 2026, replacing IAF and ILAC, launch of its own MRA; Global ACI regulator communication (May 2026) — IAF and ILAC non-operational since 1 January 2026, marks anticipated to remain in use until 1 January 2029 or later, model clause and MRA-006 transition procedure referenced; CNAS official introduction of Global ACI (cnas.org.cn) — merged from IAF and ILAC, registered in New Zealand December 2024, ~190 members including 126 MRA signatories; BIPM liaison page (bipm.org) — Global ACI assumed the roles of IAF and ILAC on 1 January 2026. Acronym and logo unveiled 14 April 2026 (global-aci.org). ISO/IEC 17025:2017 remains the current edition of the standard (see iso.org, standard 66912).

See all plans · Aligned to ISO/IEC 17025:2017 across the Global ACI general layer, CNAS, A2LA, NABL, UKAS, NVLAP, NATA & SINGLAS.