Notice to exporters 2026/23: expansion of military and dual-use open general export licences
Published 14 October 2026
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On 14 October 2026, the Export Control Joint Unit (ECJU) is announcing important changes to the coverage of some of our most used open general export licences (OGELs) across vital UK industries from aerospace to academia. These licences streamline the licensing process, reducing delays, uncertainty and administrative burdens for UK exporters working with our partners overseas.
The expansions, covering lower-risk destinations, will also allow ECJU to focus resources on remaining exports, ensuring the UK’s licensing regime continues to be robust.
From 14 October 2026, ECJU has increased coverage of the previously announced dual-use OGEL. This OGEL covers items ranging from aviation and maritime equipment to information technology items, and exports of cutting edge technologies in semiconductors and quantum.
As well as destinations already covered, we are expanding this OGEL to include:
- Bahrain
- Botswana
- Brunei
- Jordan
- Kuwait
- Mauritius
- Morocco
- North Macedonia
- Oman
- the Philippines
- Qatar
- Seychelles
We are also expanding both military goods, software and technology (MGST) OGELs. These licences permit a wide range of defence components, exports of which are critical to the UK’s ambitions under the Strategic Defence Review.
Exports to government (and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) end-users where applicable) in Brunei, Chile, Jordan, Kuwait, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Oman are now eligible under the revised OGEL specific to such end-users.
Exports to both commercial and government/NATO end users for Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea and Switzerland will become eligible under the broader MGST OGEL.
These decisions have been taken on the basis of intensive analysis of historic licensing trends, and subject to expert advisory assessments from across government, including from the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
They also reflect the feedback from ongoing conversations with stakeholders and exporters and, by potentially removing the need for over 800 low-risk standard individual export licences (SIEL) applications a year, will allow swifter and robust scrutiny on the most sensitive licences.
ECJU is committed to improving the UK’s export licensing regime and continuing to facilitate responsible exports.