Albania Has Changed Its Accounting Law. Here’s What It Means for Your Company

Albania adopted Law 87/2026 on 23 July 2026, amending the accounting law that has governed corporate reporting since 2019. It was published in the Official Gazette on 7 August 2026 and took effect fifteen days later.

The headlines have been about sustainability reporting and tax transparency. For most Albanian companies, those headlines are a distraction. They apply to a handful of the very largest businesses, and not until 2028.

What will affect you sooner is quieter: a new declaration your accountant has to sign, more detail in your notes about money lent to directors, a requirement to put your accounts on your own website, and revised size thresholds that may move your company into a different reporting category.

This article sorts out which group you are in and what each one actually has to do.

First: which group are you in?

Group 1 — Almost every company. New size thresholds, more detailed explanatory notes, a compliance statement signed by whoever prepares your accounts, and a codified test for when you must consolidate. In force now.

Group 2 — Medium and large companies, and public-interest entities. Everything in Group 1, plus you must publish your financial statements, activity report and audit report on your own website. In force now.

Group 3 — The very large. Everything above, plus sustainability reporting and public tax reporting from the 2028 reporting period. To be in this group you need to exceed 1,000 employees and 45 billion lek of operating income (sustainability), or 75 billion lek of consolidated income in each of two consecutive years (tax reporting). In Albania, that is a very short list.

Group 4 — Subsidiaries and branches of large foreign groups. You may be pulled into publication duties by the size of your parent, not your own, with local directors personally responsible. Worth checking even if the Albanian entity is modest.

Group 5 — Suppliers to large companies. You gain a new legal right to refuse over-broad sustainability questionnaires. This one is good news.

Group 1: What changes for almost everyone

The size thresholds have moved

Annex 1 of the law is replaced. Figures in lek:

Groups follow the same figures as entities.

Your category determines how much you have to disclose and publish, so this is the first thing to check. Note also that the law has renamed “turnover” as “operating income” throughout — if you sit close to a boundary, make sure your accountant is measuring the right number.

Your notes have to say more

Every company, regardless of size, must now disclose in the notes:

• Money lent to directors and board members — the amounts, interest rate, main terms, everything repaid, and critically, anything written off or waived, plus any guarantees the company has given on their behalf.
• Debts falling due after more than five years, and any obligations secured by guarantees the company itself has given, with the nature and form of the security.
• The average number of employees during the period.
• A breakdown of operating income by type of activity.

The director-loan item is the one that causes trouble in practice. These arrangements usually live in board minutes and side letters, not in the accounting system, and a loan that was quietly forgiven two years ago is exactly the kind of thing nobody thinks to report. Start a simple register now and update it as decisions are made, rather than trying to reconstruct the history in March.

You must also verify the existence and valuation of your assets, liabilities and equity by taking a stock-take at least once during each reporting period.

Someone now signs a compliance statement

The person who prepares your financial statements — your in-house accountant, or the licensed accountant or accounting firm you engage — must prepare a compliance statement that is published alongside the annual accounts.

This is not the same as the signature that already existed. Your legal representative and your preparer already signed the accounts. What is new is a separate, standardised declaration of conformity that becomes a public document.

If you outsource your bookkeeping, this changes the relationship. Your external accountant is now putting their name to a public statement about your compliance, and they will reasonably want better documentation from you before they do. Expect that conversation, and expect it to touch on fees. Have it before year-end, not after.

The exact wording will be set by a Ministry of Finance order that has not yet been issued. What you can do now is make sure the underlying evidence exists.

When you have to consolidate is now written down

The law now spells out in the statute itself when a company must prepare consolidated accounts: majority voting rights, the right to appoint or remove the majority of the board, control through a dominant influence under a contract or the statute, control of a majority of votes under a shareholder agreement, or management on a unified basis.

If your group structure relies on contractual or de facto control rather than straightforward share ownership, have someone check whether you now fall inside the consolidation perimeter. Some groups will find they do.

Group 2: Publish on your own website

Medium and large companies and public-interest entities must now publish their annual financial statements, activity report and audit or assurance report on their own official website, within the same deadline that applies to filing them.

This is the most immediate visible change in the law, and it is easy to overlook because it is administrative rather than accounting. It needs someone to own it — usually whoever controls the website, who may have no idea this obligation exists.

Two practical rules. If you publish the full accounts, they must match exactly the version the auditor signed off, and the audit report goes with them. If you publish a shortened version where the standards permit one, it must say clearly that it is reduced, say where the full accounts are filed, and state what kind of opinion the auditor gave — clean, qualified, adverse, or none at all.

There is also relief coming in the other direction: the Ministry of Finance may exempt a category of micro-entities from publishing financial statements at all.

Group 3: The 2028 obligations

Two new regimes start with reporting periods beginning in 2028. Both have thresholds high enough that most readers can stop here.

Sustainability reporting

You are caught only if you exceed both an average of 1,000 employees and 45 billion lek of operating income. Groups apply the same test on a consolidated basis.

If you are in scope, you will report on your business model and its resilience to sustainability risks, your climate targets for 2030 and 2050 and progress against them, the role of your board, your policies and due diligence, the main negative impacts of your operations and supply chain and what you are doing about them, and your key performance indicators. The reports will be assured by an auditor.

The honest advice for in-scope groups: this is not a reporting exercise you can assemble at year-end. The data infrastructure — metrics, ownership, systems, supplier engagement — typically does not exist yet and takes well over a year to build. Start scoping in 2026, not 2027.

Companies below the threshold may adopt sustainability reporting voluntarily from 2028 if there is a commercial reason to — lenders and large customers increasingly ask.

Note also that the existing non-financial report continues through the 2027 reporting period and is then replaced by sustainability reporting.

Public tax reporting

If your group’s consolidated income exceeds 75 billion lek in each of two consecutive years, you must publish a country-by-country report of income, profit before tax, tax accrued, tax paid and accumulated earnings — broken down by each country you operate in, with non-cooperative jurisdictions always shown separately.

The law is explicit that this is a public disclosure obligation, not a tax filing. It does not replace anything you already submit to the tax authorities. But it will be read against those filings, which is the real point: the gap between tax accrued and tax paid becomes public. The law lets you include a general explanation of any material discrepancy, and most groups should use it rather than leave the difference to be guessed at.

There is a limited safeguard: you may temporarily withhold specific items whose publication would seriously damage your commercial position, provided you say you have done so and explain why, and publish within five years. It does not apply to non-cooperative jurisdictions.

The report goes on your website and to the register within twelve months of the reporting date, in Albanian and at least one EU language, free of charge. Directors are jointly responsible.

Group 4: If your parent is abroad

This is the section most easily missed, because the trigger is your parent’s size, not yours.

Sustainability. An Albanian subsidiary of a foreign parent must publish the group’s sustainability report if the subsidiary’s operating income exceeded 20 billion lek in the previous period and the foreign parent exceeded 45 billion lek in each of the last two periods. Branches face a similar test.

Tax. Medium and large Albanian subsidiaries of a foreign parent, and branches of foreign entities, must publish the group tax report where consolidated group income exceeds 75 billion lek in each of two consecutive years.

In both cases, if the parent does not give you what you need, you must still publish — using whatever information you hold, together with a statement that the parent did not provide it. And in both cases, the Albanian directors are jointly responsible, to the best of their knowledge and capacity, for a document that head office controls.

That is an uncomfortable position, and the answer is procedural. Get the obligation onto the group reporting calendar now, agree in writing who at group level supplies what and by when, and make sure local management is not the last to find out.

Group 5: If you supply a large company

Here the law gives you something rather than taking it away.

If you have fewer than 1,000 employees on average and sit in the supply chain of a company that must report on sustainability, you are a protected entity. You have the right to refuse to provide information beyond what the voluntary reporting standards specify. And — this is the part worth knowing — any contract term that says otherwise is not binding, without affecting the rest of the contract.

A large customer that asks you for more must tell you what exceeds the voluntary standards and tell you that you have the right to say no.

For large companies, the flip side applies: supplier questionnaires and contract templates need reviewing, because clauses demanding open-ended ESG data from smaller suppliers are now unenforceable. There is a three-year transitional period in which a newly in-scope company that cannot get full supply-chain data must explain the efforts it made, why it failed, and what it will do about it.

One more, if you’re in extractives or forestry

Companies active in extractive industries and primary-forest logging report payments to governments. The threshold drops from 13.5 million lek to 10 million lek, reporting is now per state institution separately, and payments attributable to a specific project must be reported project by project. Splitting or combining payments to get under the threshold is expressly prohibited.

What to do, and when

In the next month

• Re-run your size classification against the new thresholds, for the company and for any group.
• If you are medium, large or a public-interest entity, put a publication page on your website and assign someone to own it.
• Ask your accountant — internal or external — how they intend to handle the compliance statement and what they need from you.

Before your next year-end

• Start the register of loans, advances, waivers and guarantees involving directors and board members.
• Schedule the stock-take required by the law.
• Set up the breakdown of operating income by activity.
• Review your group structure against the consolidation test if control does not come simply from shareholdings.

During 2027

• If you are near 1,000 employees or 45 billion lek, or part of a group near 75 billion lek, model whether you will cross the line and start building data capability.
• If you supply a large group, prepare your position on data requests. If you are a large group, review your supplier contracts and questionnaires.
• If you are part of an international group, get the Albanian obligations onto the group calendar and agree the information protocol.

What is still unknown

Several pieces are not settled yet. The wording of the compliance statement, the sustainability reporting standards, the templates for the tax report, the rules on recognising foreign standards as equivalent, the micro-entity publication exemption, and the electronic filing format all depend on orders from the Ministry of Finance, in most cases on the proposal of the National Accounting Council. Until those appear, some detail cannot be planned in full.

That is not a reason to wait. Everything in Groups 1 and 2 is in force now, and the work that supports it — the director-loan register, the security schedule, the website, the conversation with your accountant — does not depend on any of the pending guidance.

This article states the position as at September 8, 2026 and is general information, not legal advice. Obligations should be verified against the consolidated statutory text and any implementing acts.

Sources

1. Ministry of Finance and Economy, Republic of Albania
2. Official Gazette / Fletorja Zyrtare (Qendra e Botimeve Zyrtare)
3. General Directorate of Taxes (Drejtoria e Përgjithshme e Tatimeve)
4. Bank of Albania (Banka e Shqipërisë)
5. European Commission, Company Reporting and Auditing
6. IFRS Foundation / ISSB