Includes a one-page transition planner
ISO 9001:2026 published on September 16, 2026. Somewhere in the next three years your organization has to move to it. One slide in this deck is the plan: nine milestones, each with an owner, a target date and a status, worked backwards from the two dates you do not control — your next surveillance audit and your recertification audit.
Most transition guidance is a list of what changed. A list is not a plan. It does not tell you when documentation has to be finished, when training has to be done, or when your internal audits have to be complete so the findings are closed before the registrar walks in. Those dates are all derived from one fixed point, and the planner derives them.
Four files, because you need both editions
You are certified to ISO 9001:2015 today, and you stay certified to it until your transition audit closes. This quarter’s review still has to be held against the edition on your certificate. Next year’s is held against the one you are moving to. Both are in the package.
| ISO 9001:2015 deck and minutes form 44 slides · 15 pages · 21 sections |
Run this year’s review against the edition on your certificate. Use it until your transition audit closes. |
| ISO 9001:2026 deck and minutes form 48 slides · 18 pages · 24 sections |
Plan with it now, present from it once you transition. Contains the transition planner, and an internal audit and management review against the 2026 edition are both required before your registrar arrives — this is one of them. |
What the transition planner asks you to fix
- The two anchor dates — your next surveillance audit and your recertification audit. Your registrar sets them. Everything else follows from them.
- Planning completed by — including the clause-by-clause outline of what has to change, the effort, and who does each part.
- Documentation updated · registrar audit scheduled · training completed · implementation · internal audits completed · registrar transition audit completed — each with an owner, a target date and a status.
Certification bodies need roughly nine to twelve months to be accredited to a new edition, so the first 2026 certificates are not expected before about mid-2027. Aim at a 2027 or 2028 surveillance visit. Auditor capacity tightens sharply in the final year of any transition, and the organizations that wait are the ones that discover their registrar has no slots left.
What actually changed at clause 9.3
More than a renumbering. The 2015 edition named six inputs; the 2026 edition names eight, and two of them are genuinely new questions rather than the same questions relettered.
| Interested parties, 9.3.2 c) | A named input in its own right. A review carried over from the 2015 agenda has no section for it, so it is missed silently. |
| Risks and opportunities split, 9.3.2 g) and h) | One 2015 input became two, matching the split of clause 6.1. An auditor can now ask about each separately, and one combined answer no longer covers both. |
| Climate change, 4.1 | Top management has to determine whether it is a relevant issue. A finding of “not relevant” is a legitimate answer; having made no determination is not. A reference slide gives the six routes by which it reaches a quality system, with examples. |
| Performance inputs reordered | Nonconformities first, customer satisfaction fourth. Every section in the 2026 deck is anchored to its new clause reference, printed under the title. |
| Retained became available | The 2015 edition said retain documented information as evidence; the 2026 edition says it shall be available. Retention is the stricter reading and is what a registrar will ask to see. The form says so plainly. |
What is in each pair
- A deck you present from and a form that becomes the record, generated from the same section list. Section 14 on the slide is Section 14 on the form. The presenter and the recorder are never on different items.
- Every section anchored to the requirement it satisfies, with the clause printed under the title. Where a section is MSI practice rather than a clause requirement, it says so, so an auditor can tell the difference.
- Terms used in this review — plain-language explanations of every term that carries a specific meaning, with the clause where each is defined. The review does not depend on who has read the standard most recently.
- Before you hold this review — each section mapped to the record that feeds it, and what to do if you do not have it. This is the page that stops a review being held on data that does not exist.
- Worked examples with completed data, each labeled and built to be replaced. They interlock: a missed target traces to a process, and that process traces to a resource decision.
- Document control on every slide and every page, applied through the slide master so it cannot be dropped from a slide added later, plus a cover record identity block: organization, period covered, date held, called by, recorded by, and your own record reference.
What this does not do
It does not transition your system. It plans the transition and records the management reviews that the transition requires, which are two of the things a registrar will ask for and not all of them.
It does not reproduce the text of ISO 9001. You still need your own licensed copy of the standard.
Questions
Why am I paying for the 2015 edition when it has been superseded?
Because you are still certified to it. ISO withdrew the 2015 edition on publication, but existing certificates remain valid through a transition period expected to run three years, and your review has to be held against the edition on your certificate until your transition audit closes. You get both so you can run this year’s review correctly and plan next year’s at the same time.
How long do we have?
The transition is expected to run three years from publication, to around September 2029, subject to confirmation by the accreditation community. That is the outer limit, not the target — see the note above about registrar capacity.
Does a management review against the 2026 edition have to happen before the transition audit?
Yes, along with an internal audit. Both are inputs a registrar will look for as evidence the system is operating to the new edition rather than merely documented to it. The 2026 pair is how you produce one.
Can we just renumber our existing deck?
You could, and the renumbering is the easy part. What renumbering does not give you is a section for interested parties, a second section separating opportunities from risks, or a record of the climate change determination — and those are the three an auditor working from the 2026 clause list will go looking for.
Who wrote it?
Management Systems International, LLC — a veteran-owned, female-owned ISO consulting firm founded in 1998. Across 28 years MSI has supported 80+ certifications, attended 200+ audits, and trained 600+ professionals.
Where to go next
MSI’s QMS interviews course prepares the people who will be questioned during a certification or surveillance audit, including the ones who will be asked what the management review concluded.
MSI’s ISO procedure templates and guides are editable Word procedures and full documentation packages covering every clause this review reports on — the system behind the record, and the documentation your transition plan says has to be updated.
Questions before you buy? Call 760-434-9141 or toll-free 888-914-9141, or visit msi-international.com.
Delivered as two .pptx and two .docx files, fully editable, no protection and no macros. Worked examples use a fictional organization created by MSI for illustration only, marked as such throughout and intended to be replaced with your own data.
© 2026 Management Systems International, LLC. All rights reserved.
