4 September 2026
The Eurosystem has decided to proceed with the planned November 2026 releases for its TARGET Services, shifting their deployment from 14 November 2026 to 28 November 2026. The decision follows the recent announcement by SWIFT to delay its Standards Release 2026 following the industry’s request for additional time to prepare for the removal of unstructured postal address.
The Eurosystem has assessed the impact of the SWIFT decision on its market infrastructures and on key stakeholders, in close collaboration with European market participants. To proceed with the planned scope of the releases for T2, T2S, TIPS and the Eurosystem Collateral Management System (ECMS), changes will need to be implemented by all stakeholders, necessitating a two-week delay.
All stakeholders connecting to T2, T2S, TIPS and ECMS through application-to-application (A2A) communication based on ISO 20022 messages should continue their preparations and plan for user testing activities to start on 9 October 2026.
The Eurosystem will continue to coordinate closely with SWIFT and other major Market Infrastructures to support a coordinated implementation of the changes initially planned for the November 2026 Standards Release across the global payments ecosystem and to advocate for returning to the original roadmap as soon as possible.
The Eurosystem will continue to support the smooth processing of cross-border payments for European market participants. This will be achieved by introducing a temporary measure in T2 allowing fully unstructured postal addresses in T2 RTGS messages to continue to be used for a limited period. The introduction of this temporary measure reflects the discussions with the European market industry and aims to address the concerns regarding the readiness of parts of the global payments ecosystem for the migration towards structured and hybrid postal addresses.
T2 participants are expected to continue their efforts in implementing structured or hybrid postal addresses while ensuring operational readiness for receiving unstructured postal addresses during the period in which the temporary measure is available.