CSO, 20 February 2026, 11am
NACE is the standard statistical classification of economic activities used across the European Union for classifying economic activities.
The term NACE is derived from the French for Nomenclature of Economic Activities (NACE) and it groups organisations, companies, and people by their business activity to provide consistent statistics on production, employment, and national accounts across Europe.
The CSO submits data to Eurostat using NACE classifications.
The European economy has evolved since the last version of NACE Rev. 2 was published in 2006. An update to the existing NACE codes will be rolled out throughout 2026, referred to as NACE Rev. 2.1. This update better reflects emerging economic activities by introducing new concepts at all levels and restructuring some existing classifications and headings.
Great efforts have been made to maintain the structure of the classifications, but some changes have been made to better reflect changing business activity. For instance, Section J, which previously covered the areas of Information and Communication, will now be split into two sections. Section J will now be used for Publishing, Broadcasting, and Content Production and Distribution Activities, while Section K will cover Telecommunication, Computer Programming, Consulting, Computing Infrastructure and Other Information Service Activities.
There are also changes at all lower structural levels of the classification such as Division, Group and Class. A summary of the main changes is given in section 4 of Eurostat's NACE Rev. 2.1 introductory guidelines.
NACE classifications are primarily used for statistical purposes and changes to NACE coding will occur mainly within the CSO statistical Business Register. These changes should not directly impact enterprises but will ensure that surveys are appropriately allocated to enterprises based on their economic activities.
For many statistics, there is a need for historical time series using the same version of the NACE classification system. Therefore, the CSO and Eurostat, which gathers statistical information for EU countries, plan to produce parallel data sets for some releases for a certain period of time, using both NACE Rev. 2.1 and NACE Rev. 2.
As there are considerable differences between the two versions of the classification, this will require backcasting methods to be applied to previous statistics so they can be presented using NACE Rev. 2.1. Backcasting is a statistical technique employed to ensure the coherence of a time series.
For some statistics, there may also be double reporting using both NACE Rev. 2.1 as well as NACE Rev. 2 for a limited period of time.
Releases and statistical tables published on PxStat will be appropriately labelled to denote the NACE classification version that is being used. In so far as possible, the CSO will inform users in advance around the expected timetable for moving to the new version of NACE for particular statistics.
Implementation of NACE Rev. 2.1 will be undertaken on a gradual basis, according to the timelines set out in EU regulations. Business Statistics and Labour Force Statistics will be amongst the first releases to publish using the new classification system during 2026.
More detailed information about the changes to Nace Rev. 2.1 is available on our NACE - Classification of Economic Activities webpage.
If you have any specific queries about a particular statistical release, please email the relevant section. Section contact details can be found in the contents section of each release.