Why IFRS 18 Early Adoption Looks Faster in Some Countries Than Others

A Global Comparison of IFRS 18 Early Adoption, Reporting Deadlines and Assurance Requirements — August 2026

IFRS 18 is a global accounting standard. But its first real-world implementation examples are not appearing around the world at the same pace — or with the same level of assurance.

We noticed this while building our IFRS 18 Early Adoption Tracker.

As we collected early-adoption cases across jurisdictions, a pattern began to emerge.

In Japan, reviewed half-year financial statements applying IFRS 18 had already appeared. In Qatar, Vodafone Qatar had published reviewed IFRS 18 interim financial statements, including quarterly information. In other markets, examples were appearing later, without external review, or had barely begun to emerge.

That raised a simple question:

Why does a global accounting standard produce such different patterns of early implementation evidence across countries?

As of August 2026, our research suggests that the answer lies not only in IFRS 18 itself, but in the interaction between local endorsement, the accounting framework used in each market, interim reporting deadlines and assurance requirements.

Early application does not mean immediate application everywhere

The IASB issued IFRS 18 Presentation and Disclosure in Financial Statements in April 2024. The Standard becomes mandatory for annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2027, with earlier application permitted.

But permission from the IASB does not necessarily mean that every IFRS-reporting company around the world can immediately adopt the Standard.

In many jurisdictions, new IFRS Accounting Standards first need to be incorporated into the local regulatory framework.

The European Union, for example, endorsed IFRS 18 in February 2026. The United Kingdom endorsed the Standard in December 2025.

This helps explain why relatively few early-adoption examples emerged from major European markets during 2025: the Standard existed, but the local regulatory process was still catching up.

The reporting infrastructure also needed to follow.

The IFRS Foundation published the IFRS Accounting Taxonomy 2025 in March 2025, including a dedicated Early Application of IFRS 18 Entry Point and taxonomy elements supporting areas such as management-defined performance measures.

So the practical path from issuance to observable implementation looks less like:

IASB issues IFRS 18 → companies adopt

and more like:

IASB standard → local endorsement → reporting infrastructure → company implementation → external reporting

But even that does not fully explain the differences we see in the database.

The less obvious factor: how interim reporting works in each market

Once IFRS 18 is available for use, another set of rules starts to matter:

How often must companies report? How quickly must the information be published? And must it be reviewed by an external auditor?

Those rules differ considerably.

The following matrix is deliberately simplified. Its purpose is not to catalogue every securities-law requirement, but to show the factors most relevant to how quickly externally observable IFRS 18 cases can emerge.

The differences are striking.

Qatar combines IFRS reporting with particularly fast interim reporting: quarterly financial statements can be required within 30 days, half-year information within 45 days, with external review. Vodafone Qatar shows what that framework can produce in practice — reviewed IFRS 18 information at a very early stage of global implementation.

Japan has a different accounting framework. IFRS is voluntary rather than mandatory for eligible listed companies. But companies that do use IFRS operate within a statutory half-year reporting regime with a 45-day deadline and auditor review.

Singapore is fast as well. SGX rules generally require half-year results within 45 days, and certain issuers report quarterly on the same timetable. But the rules do not generally require companies to commission an external audit or review of those interim announcements. SGX expressly notes that directors are not expected to commission an audit for the required interim confirmation.

Australia sits somewhere in between. Most ASX-listed entities must provide half-year information within two months. Australian Tier 1 reporting by for-profit entities is designed so that compliance with Australian Accounting Standards also results in compliance with IFRS Accounting Standards.

By contrast, the major European markets generally allow a longer half-year reporting window.

The United States presents a different case. Although qualifying foreign private issuers may report under IFRS, they are not subject to the Form 10-Q framework that applies to domestic issuers. Their interim reporting instead depends largely on home-market requirements, so the United States does not provide a single timetable for the emergence of IFRS 18 interim reporting examples.

The result is that the first IFRS 18 examples do not emerge on a level playing field.

The same standard, but different visibility

This changed how we interpret the early-adoption data.

If reviewed IFRS 18 financial information appears relatively early in Qatar or Japan, that does not necessarily mean that companies in those markets are implementing IFRS 18 “better” or are further ahead internally.

Likewise, a lack of comparable examples from another jurisdiction does not necessarily mean that companies there are behind.

What we can observe publicly is partly a product of the local reporting architecture.

A market combining:

IFRS reporting + short interim deadlines + external review

has a structural tendency to produce reviewed implementation evidence earlier.

A market with:

IFRS reporting + longer reporting deadlines + no mandatory review

may produce fewer directly comparable examples at exactly the same point in time.

And another variable comes before all of these: whether IFRS itself is mandatory, optional or embedded in a local IFRS-equivalent framework.

That matters when interpreting any early-adoption database.

The database shows us observable implementation evidence. It does not, by itself, rank the implementation progress of entire countries.

Why the early cases still matter

That qualification does not make early-adoption cases less useful.

It makes comparing them more important.

IFRS 18 changes the structure of the statement of profit or loss and introduces significant new requirements around management-defined performance measures, aggregation and disaggregation, and expense disclosures.

The first financial statements are therefore giving practitioners something that the Standard itself cannot provide: evidence of how companies are actually making those judgments.

That is why our tracker goes beyond identifying whether a company has adopted IFRS 18.

We also track areas such as:

• assurance status;

• management-defined performance measures and reconciliation disclosures;

• classification and disaggregation of foreign-exchange gains and losses; and

• function-by-nature expense disclosures.

As more cases emerge, differences between companies will become more meaningful than the simple question of who adopted first.

Some approaches will become common. Others may remain company-specific. And some early practices may evolve as preparers, auditors and regulators gain more experience with the Standard.

IFRS 18 does not become mandatory until 2027.

But as of August 2026, the implementation evidence is already accumulating — under very different reporting environments around the world.

We think those early examples are worth preserving.

So we will continue adding new cases, updating existing ones, and comparing how IFRS 18 moves from the Standard into actual financial statements.

Explore the IFRS 18 Early Adoption Tracker.

Disclaimer

This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute accounting, auditing, legal, investment, or other professional advice. The information is based on publicly available materials and IFRS-LABO’s analysis as of the date of publication. Readers should refer to the relevant standards, regulations, and original company disclosures when making professional judgments.