Sanctioned countries list 2026: OFAC, UN, EU and UK programs

OFAC rewrote its answer to "which countries does the United States sanction?" on 26 October 2026, and the first line of OFAC FAQ 10 says OFAC "does not maintain a specific list of countries". Then it names the places under broad sanctions: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and the Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. Syria is no longer among them.

The FATF grey and black lists are a separate matter, and the guide to FATF high risk countries explains why a listing there is not a sanction. This page lists the sanctions programs themselves, publisher by publisher, as they stood on 1 November 2026.

Which countries are sanctioned in 2026?

Table 1 lists 33 countries with a program from OFAC, the UN, the EU or the UK, one row per country.

Table 1. Country sanctions programs by publisher (checked 1 November 2026 on OFAC's program pages and FAQ 10, the UN Security Council sanctions pages, the EU Sanctions Map and gov.uk)

The OFAC column uses OFAC's own categories from FAQ 10. A broad embargo bars US persons from most dealings with the place. A blocked government freezes the state and what it owns, and named persons means only listed people and companies are blocked. OFAC's program page lists 36 active programs, and its counter terrorism, cyber and narcotics programs follow their targets anywhere.

The four publishers often disagree. Cuba is a US embargo with no UN, EU or UK regime behind it, while Belarus faces trade and finance limits in the EU and the UK but only named persons at OFAC. Five countries appear on the EU map alone.

What changed in 2026

• 28 January 2026: the OFSI consolidated list closed, leaving the UK Sanctions List as the single record of UK designations.
• 23 April and 23 July 2026: the EU adopted its 20th package and its 21st package of sanctions against Russia.
• 24 August 2026: the State Department removed Syria's designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism.
• 18 September 2026: OFAC moved its Ethiopia program to inactive after the national emergency behind it expired, and its names left the SDN List.
• 30 September 2026: OFAC's Cuba rules began to restrict certain indirect financial transactions with entities on the State Department's Cuba Restricted List.
• 12 October 2026: the EU listed 1,569 more companies and executives in Russia's military industry, its largest single set, taking listings under its regime for Ukraine's territorial integrity close to 4,600 (European Commission).

What is the difference between a country wide embargo and list based sanctions?

A country wide embargo bars most dealings with a place, while a list based program blocks named people, companies, ships and aircraft wherever they are. OFAC says its programs can be "either comprehensive or selective", and FAQ 10 sorts them into three kinds:

• Broad embargoes. US persons are generally barred from most transactions with Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions unless a license allows them.
• Blocked governments. The governments of Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela are blocked, with the bodies they own or control. Venezuela has no broad embargo, so a payment to a private Venezuelan firm turns on who owns it and whether it is listed.
• Named persons. Most programs block listed names only. OFAC's own example is Nicaragua, whose program does not generally prohibit dealings with the country, and FAQ 10 adds that "sanctioned persons can be located anywhere in the world".

Russia sits between the first and the last. There is no broad embargo, yet OFAC bars certain categories of trade, including the export and import of certain goods and services.

OFAC FAQ 951 gives the clearest case. It says "there are no comprehensive sanctions on Afghanistan", so goods may be exported and money sent in and out, provided no sanctioned person or property is involved. The Taliban themselves stay designated.

Is Syria still sanctioned?

Named Syrians are. The country as a whole is no longer under a broad US embargo. Executive Order 14312 of 30 June 2025 revoked the six orders behind the Syria program from 1 July 2025, and OFAC removed the Syrian Sanctions Regulations on 25 August 2025. The Caesar Act was repealed on 18 December 2025, and Syria's terrorism designation was rescinded on 24 August 2026, according to OFAC's PAARSS page.

What remains is list based. The Promoting Accountability for Assad and Regional Stabilization Sanctions program (PAARSS) targets former President Assad and his associates, human rights abusers and Captagon traffickers. OFAC's own FAQs have not caught up everywhere, since FAQ 951 still lists Syria beside Cuba, Iran and North Korea as a broad program while FAQ 10 does not. The EU and UK Syria regimes stay in force too, with asset freezes and limits on goods such as equipment for internal repression.

Does a sanctioned country mean you cannot do business there?

Only where a broad embargo binds you. Everywhere else the names decide, and clean names still do not clear a country. In May 2026, OFAC settled with Adani Enterprises, an Indian company, for $275,000,000. From November 2023 to June 2025 it bought liquefied petroleum gas from a trader in Dubai that presented the cargo as Omani and Iraqi. The company checked the vessels, their operators and the sellers against the SDN List, and none was listed. The gas was Iranian, and US financial institutions processed 32 dollar payments for it, worth $192,104,044 (OFAC enforcement release, 18 May 2026). In OFAC's words, "Red flags should have put AEL on notice that the LPG actually originated from Iran."

Every country touch therefore raises two questions. The first is about the country, and it decides the case only where a broad embargo binds you: do the customer, the goods, the route or the bank tie the deal to Cuba, Iran, North Korea or the occupied regions? The second is about names, and it applies everywhere. A supplier in Myanmar is barred only if it or an owner is listed, or if its goods fall under an export limit.

How should sanctioned countries feed your risk model?

Picture a payment firm onboarding an online electronics seller registered in Dubai, with buyers in Belarus and Kazakhstan (an illustrative case). No name is listed, and Belarus has no broad US embargo. The EU, though, limits trade with Belarus, including machinery and electrical equipment, and the UK runs wider trade sanctions on it too. The seller is not barred. It still carries more risk than one selling to Germany.

That is how a risk based approach uses country programs: they raise the country factor in a customer risk assessment without deciding the outcome. A broad embargo is different. For a firm it binds, no score makes the payment lawful, so it belongs in a stop rule outside the score.

complead, formerly Sanction Scanner, built its free AML Country Risk Index the same way. Sanctions intensity, meaning how many active programs name the country or its entities, makes up 35 percent of each country's 0 to 100 score, and the index states that a high score means more checks, not a ban.

Which UN sanctions regimes are in force?

The UN Security Council has 15 sanctions regimes in force, each run by a committee that a Council member chairs. It has set up 31 since 1966, with measures from arms embargoes and travel bans to financial and commodity restrictions (UN Security Council sanctions). Of the 15 committees, 14 cover a country.

Table 2. UN Security Council sanctions committees in force (1 November 2026)

The 1267 list follows ISIL and Al Qaida across borders, so it sits at the center of terrorist financing checks wherever a customer lives. Iran's UN list is back, too. The 1737 committee page says the earlier measures were reapplied through the process in resolution 2231, and the list now holds 43 individuals and 78 entities.

How do the EU and UK publish their country sanctions?

The EU's regimes are mapped on the EU Sanctions Map, and the UK lists its own in a gov.uk collection. Both keep country regimes apart from thematic ones.

On 1 November 2026 the EU map listed 55 regimes: 49 under a country and 6 thematic, such as terrorism and cyber attacks. Each regime shows its measures. Most country regimes freeze the assets of listed persons and bar their entry. Russia's sectoral regime adds measures on crude oil, liquefied natural gas, finance and dual use goods exports, and Belarus carries a similar mix of trade and finance limits. There is no EU Cuba regime at all.

The UK's collection of current regimes covers 25 countries, counting an arms embargo on mainland China and Hong Kong, plus nine themes. Every UK designation now sits on the UK Sanctions List. The Russia, Belarus and North Korea regimes add wider financial sanctions and trade limits, and the Russia regime also reaches Crimea and the areas outside the Ukrainian government's control.

What should you do when a customer or payment touches a sanctioned country?

Work through six checks in this order, and record each answer.

1. Find the regimes that bind you. US persons follow OFAC. A firm outside the US can breach OFAC rules too when its dollar payments clear through US correspondent banks, as Adani's did from accounts at UAE and Indian banks. An EU or UK nexus brings in those regimes.
2. Map every country touch. Look at registration, owners, banks, the origin of goods, the route and the ship. A sanctions compliance declaration asks the counterparty where it operates and whether it trades in, with or through countries under broad sanctions.
3. Stop broad embargo cases. If an embargo binds you and no license covers the deal, decline or escalate it.
4. Screen every name and owner. Enter a person, company or vessel name in the free Sanctions Check and it is screened against OFAC's SDN List and the UK, EU and UN lists, with matches shown on screen and a PDF report by email. For the ship, a vessel sanctions check also searches by IMO number and the names it sailed under before.
5. Check goods and sectors. Russia, Belarus, Iran and North Korea carry goods and finance limits beyond the names.
6. Apply enhanced due diligence and decide. Write down who decided and why.

A one off check goes stale the day a list changes. complead's client screening and ongoing monitoring keeps rescreening customers as the lists move. Behind it sit 3,500+ sanctions, PEP and watchlists from 220+ jurisdictions, refreshed every 15 minutes. The log keeps every search with the searcher, the query, the time and the outcome, and searches that find nothing are kept too.

Table 1 settles the country question for 33 places. For a named counterparty, the four publishers' own lists decide, and searching each of them for one name is what the guide on how to check a sanctions list covers.

How this page was checked. Each program, committee and regime in Table 1 was checked against its publisher's own page on 1 November 2026: OFAC's program pages and FAQs, the UN Security Council sanctions pages, the EU Sanctions Map and gov.uk. Programs change often, so confirm the current entry before you act. Last reviewed: 2 November 2026.