People in England and Wales could face prison sentences for keeping or sharing certain types of pornographic material as three types of pornography will become a criminal offence in the UK (England and Wales) on Friday, 6 November, under the Crime and Policing Act 2026.
The changes cover material depicting strangulation or suffocation, sexual activity between people presented as relatives, and sexual activity involving adults pretending to be under 16.
If you are one of the people who already hold or have uploaded such pornographical material somewhere, you should check it and delete it before the law comes into effect.
The Ministry of Justice says the offences apply to existing images if possession or publication continues after the law takes effect. A file saved years ago can therefore create a new criminal liability if it remains in someone’s custody or control on Friday.
The government says people must permanently delete or dispose of material covered by the new offences before Friday.
UK government’s guidance applies to England and Wales, rather than the whole of the United Kingdom. The commencement date is established by the Crime and Policing Act 2026 (Commencement No. 4) Regulations, which bring the relevant provisions into force on 6 November.
What the law covers
The first category is pornography that explicitly and realistically depicts one person strangling or suffocating another. The government says strangulation generally means pressure applied to another person’s neck.
Suffocation is wider: it can include covering someone’s mouth and nose or compressing their chest in a way that affects breathing. The Ministry says realistic AI-generated images can also fall within the strangulation offence.
The second category concerns explicit, realistic depictions of penetrative sexual activity between people who appear to be relatives or are pretending to be related.
The specified relationships include parents, children, grandparents, grandchildren, siblings, half-siblings, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews.
Step-parent, step-child, step-sibling and foster relationships are also covered in certain circumstances, where one person is, or is pretending to be, under 18.
The third offence covers sexual activity between people where at least one appears to be, or is pretending to be, under 16.
The statutory test requires an explicit and realistic depiction, and it also says that someone is not to be treated as pretending to be under 16 where the pretence is fanciful.
The law says that people shown in certain material have to look realistic. But it doesn’t make all fictional sexual content illegal.
So, if you’re just watching porn online, you don’t need to worry about it.
The penalties and the problem of old files
Possession carries a maximum prison sentence of two years for images depicting strangulation, suffocation or prohibited sexual activity between relatives. The maximum rises to three years for material involving someone portrayed as under 16.
Publishing any of the three categories carries a maximum sentence of five years.
Publishing does not only mean running a pornography website. Sending images to another person, uploading them online or making them available for others by posting, sending, sharing or distributing them to be viewable can also fall within the offence.
Possession is similarly broad.
The Ministry says it generally means having custody or control of an image, including material stored on a phone, computer, personal account or cloud service.
The government has specifically warned that the offence can apply to images already in someone’s possession.
Its guidance states that possession is a continuing act. Anyone holding covered material must permanently delete it or otherwise dispose of it before commencement. Anyone who has uploaded or shared it must remove it and stop making it available.
The new law does not retroactively criminalize possession before 6 November, but continuing to hold or share covered material after that date can be an offense in the UK.
Private recordings and the limits of the exemptions
The legislation does contain defences, but it does not provide a blanket exemption for every privately made, consensual recording of porn.
A person may have a defence if they had a legitimate reason for possessing or publishing the image, did not know and had no reason to suspect its nature, or received it unsolicited and did not keep it for an unreasonable period.
There are also defenses available for individuals who participated directly in the activity, as long as they meet the legal requirements. According to the guidance, private, consensual recordings made by the participants themselves are generally allowed as long as they remain private.
The specific conditions for these defenses can vary:
- For the family-relationship offence, the participant defence requires that the person was not actually related to the other participant in one of the prohibited ways.
- For the under-16 role-play offence, neither participant can actually have been under 16.
Publication defences also impose restrictions on who can receive the image, generally limiting the relevant participant defence to sharing it with the other person depicted.
So there’s a clear difference for adult performers and those who make their own recordings, but keeping something private and sharing it publicly are treated differently, and just having consent doesn’t always decide if a defense is valid.
Why is the government introducing the ban?
The measures follow the Independent Pornography Review led by Conservative peer Baroness Gabby Bertin, published on 27 February 2025.
The review identified pornography depicting strangulation as a widespread online phenomenon and raised concerns about its potential influence on sexual behaviour, particularly among young people.
A government strategy cites a 2024 online survey by the Institute for Addressing Strangulation in which 35% of respondents aged 16 to 34 said they had been strangled or choked at least once during consensual sex.
The figure records respondents’ experiences. It does not, by itself, establish that pornography caused the behaviour.
Justice minister Alex Davies-Jones said the intention was to address the influence of violent material without criminalising ordinary sexual preferences.
“This isn’t about criminalising harmless sexual preferences. But porn can shape what people think a healthy relationship looks like, especially young people,” she said. “Content that normalises, or even glorifies, violence against women is dangerous and can blur the line with what is acceptable in real life.”
Baroness Bertin welcomed the legislation, saying it had come “not a moment too soon”. She has also called for stronger enforcement and regulation of companies hosting pornography.
Platforms face a separate test
The new offences will also be designated priority offences under the Online Safety Act 2023. The government says this will require in-scope online services to take proactive and proportionate steps to prevent the material from appearing on their platforms.
That gives regulators a role beyond individual criminal investigations. Websites and services will have to consider how their moderation systems identify prohibited content, including material shared through user accounts.
An adult marketplace, iWantClips, announced on 28 October that it would restrict 17 fetish categories for UK users before 6 November, including choking fantasy, breath play, face sitting, and various “smother” categories. The platform said the changes were driven by legal requirements rather than a judgement on its artists or their content.
However, for law being law, it can be hard to figure out if an image is okay to use legally, especially when the age or relationship of the people in the image relies on sounds, captions, or extra details.
