Is Your Company's Equality Plan About to Hit Its 4-Year Expiry?

An Equality Plan (Plan de Igualdad) in Spain has a maximum validity of four years, and that term cannot be extended. Once it lapses, if a successor plan has not already been negotiated and registered, the company is left with no plan in force at all — and exposed to penalties and a labour inspection. That is why renewal must begin months before the expiry date, not after it.

If your organisation approved its Equality Plan in 2021 under Royal Decree 901/2020, it is very likely entering its renewal window right now. And in 2026 that renewal arrives with two new pressures that change the rules: the EU Pay Transparency Directive and the EU AI Act. This guide explains when your plan expires, how to renew it step by step, and which new obligations you need to fold in this year.

How long does an Equality Plan last, and when does it expire?

Spanish law sets a maximum validity of four years for an Equality Plan. The negotiating parties may agree a shorter term — one, two or three years — but never a longer one. The rule sits in Article 9 of Royal Decree 901/2020, which governs equality plans and their registration.

The clock runs from the plan's registration in the public registry (REGCON), not from the date it was signed internally or when negotiation began. A common and costly assumption is that, once approved and filed, the plan is indefinite. It is not: Spanish law requires periodic renewal so the plan stays effective and adapts to changes in the workforce.

Remember, too, that the obligation to hold an Equality Plan reaches every company with 50 or more employees, in both the private and public sectors, following the reforms to Organic Law 3/2007 on effective equality between women and men. 

How to tell if your Equality Plan is about to expire

To check where you stand, review three things:

• The REGCON registration date. Find the registration date and add the agreed validity (or four years, if no shorter term was set). That is your real deadline.
• The year of approval. Many companies registered their first plan in 2021, after Royal Decree 901/2020 and Royal Decree 902/2020 took effect. Those plans expire by 2025 at the latest; plans registered through 2022 expire in 2026.
• Material internal changes. You do not always wait for the end date. The plan must be reviewed earlier in the event of significant workforce changes, mergers, acquisitions or restructuring, or when the monitoring committee or the labour authority requires it.

If your plan expires within the next twelve months, you are already in the window where the process should start.

What happens if you let your Equality Plan lapse

The immediate consequence is the most dangerous: because the term cannot be extended, a lapsed plan with no successor leaves the company with no Equality Plan in legal terms — exactly as if it had never had one. From there, the consequences stack up.

On top of the fines come other significant consequences:

• Loss of hiring incentives and subsidies. Holding a registered Equality Plan is a condition for accessing certain recruitment incentives.
• Exclusion from public procurement. A company that is obliged to have a plan but lacks one in force can be shut out of public-sector tenders.
• Reputational damage and repeat-offence loading. Penalties can be increased for repeat infringements, and the absence of a plan harms standing with clients, talent and the administration.

How to renew an Equality Plan, step by step

Renewing is not updating a document: it means repeating, in essence, every stage of the original process — and at a higher level of demand than the first plan. The ordered process is:

1. Set up the negotiating committee. The company and the legal representation of the workforce sit down again to negotiate the new plan.
2. Run the updated diagnosis, including the pay audit. You re-analyse the organisation across recruitment, promotion, training, pay, work–life balance and harassment prevention. The pay audit is required under Royal Decree 902/2020 on equal pay.
3. Negotiate the new measures. Set concrete, measurable objectives, the measures themselves, responsible owners, resources, monitoring indicators and an implementation calendar.
4. Sign the new plan. The agreement must be closed before the previous plan loses validity, to avoid the legal gap.
5. Register the plan in REGCON. Registration is an indispensable condition for the plan to be valid and enforceable.
6. Keep the plan under review. Documented monitoring, at least annually, lets you correct deviations before the next expiry.

The operational key: plan the start of negotiation well ahead of the expiry date, because the diagnosis and pay audit take time.

2026 changes the rules: the EU Pay Transparency Directive

This year's renewal does not start from the same place as the 2021 round. The Pay Transparency Directive — Directive (EU) 2023/970 — has a transposition deadline of 7 June 2026. As of that date, Spain has not yet completed formal transposition, but the obligation to adapt processes and structures does not disappear because of the delay.

The directive directly reinforces the diagnosis your renewal depends on, because it introduces, among others, these requirements:

• Salary bands in job adverts, and a ban on asking candidates about their previous pay.
• A right to information for staff on average pay levels, broken down by sex, for work of equal value.
• A 5% threshold: an unjustified pay difference above that figure triggers a joint pay evaluation with workforce representatives.
• A reversed burden of proof: it is the employer who must prove no pay discrimination exists, not the worker.

Pay-gap reporting obligations follow a staggered calendar from 2027, depending on headcount. The practical conclusion: the Equality Plan you renew in 2026 should be designed with these rules in mind from the outset, not as a later add-on.

AI in recruitment and HR: the new front in your Equality Plan

There is a second front that most plans still do not address. If your organisation uses artificial intelligence in HR — to place targeted job adverts, screen CVs, score interviews, evaluate performance, or support promotion decisions — those tools are regulated.

The EU AI Act — Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 — classifies as high-risk, in its Annex III, AI used for the recruitment and selection of people and AI used in decisions on working conditions, promotion or termination. This classification applies regardless of company size, and whether the tool was bought from a vendor or built in-house. Our deep dive on EU AI Act and HR in Spain walks through exactly what this means for employers.

For the company deploying these systems, it implies concrete duties: human oversight, transparency towards candidates, bias monitoring and control, and record-keeping of AI-assisted decisions. That is the same goal your Equality Plan pursues — guaranteeing non-discrimination in recruitment, promotion and pay. Auditing your AI tools is therefore not a topic apart from the renewal; it is part of doing it properly in 2026. Where an AI system materially affects people's rights, a Fundamental Rights Impact Assessment (FRIA) — which expressly covers non-discrimination — becomes the natural companion to your equality diagnosis.

The dates are tight: full requirements for high-risk systems are enforceable from 2 August 2026, and infringements can carry fines of up to €35 million or 7% of annual turnover for the most serious breaches, with lower tiers for other violations. In Spain, oversight falls to AESIA, the national AI supervisory agency — see our explainer on what AESIA means for your business — alongside the GDPR and LOPDGDD duties you already know from your selection processes and personnel records.

Your 2026 renewal checklist

Before you close the process, confirm you have covered each point:

• Expiry date confirmed from the REGCON registration date.
• Negotiation started with enough lead time before expiry.
• Negotiating committee constituted.
• Updated diagnosis and pay audit completed.
• Measures with measurable objectives, owners, resources and a calendar.
• Alignment with Directive (EU) 2023/970 (salary bands, 5% threshold, pay information rights).
• Inventory of HR AI tools, classified for risk under Annex III of the EU AI Act.
• New plan signed and registered in REGCON before the expiry date.
• Documented annual monitoring mechanism in place.