A Lyon engineering company filed its request for arbitration on 12 June 2026, under an ICC clause signed in 2022. Its general counsel had prepared the file the way the house always did: a concise request, quantification refined later, terms of reference as the first real crystallisation of the claims. He discovered that there would be no terms of reference, that the case management conference would be held within thirty days, and that a forgotten claim could no longer simply be added afterwards.
The Rules of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce that entered into force on 1 June 2026 are the most substantial revision in a decade. This page describes what actually changes for a company, arbitration by arbitration: the temporal scope, the disappearance of mandatory terms of reference, the lock placed on new claims, early determination, the raised expedited procedure threshold, the very expedited procedure, the broadened powers of the emergency arbitrator, and the new obligations on disclosure and funding.
1. Which arbitrations the new Rules apply to
The 2026 Rules apply to any arbitration commenced on or after 1 June 2026, unless the parties have agreed to submit to the rules in force at an earlier date (article 1(2)). The criterion is therefore the date the proceedings are commenced, not the date the contract was signed. A clause concluded in 2019 takes effect under the 2026 Rules as soon as the request for arbitration is filed after that date.
One important exception concerns the expedited procedure threshold, which depends instead on the date the arbitration agreement was concluded. That split deserves to be understood: the procedural regime is the one in force on the day the institution is seised, whereas automatic access to the expedited track is measured on the day of signature. A company managing a portfolio of old and recent contracts therefore applies two grids.
The practical consequence for existing clauses is immediate. They need no amendment for the new Rules to apply, but they deserve a re-reading, because the balances they struck have shifted. A clause drafted with terms of reference in mind, when those no longer exist, or with a different expedited threshold, no longer says quite what its drafter believed.
2. The end of terms of reference, and the thirty day conference
The terms of reference, the document recording the parties, their claims and the issues in dispute, had been for decades the hallmark of ICC arbitration. They cease to be mandatory. The tribunal retains the option of drawing them up where it considers it useful, but the structuring step becomes the initial case management conference, to be held within thirty days of transmission of the file to the arbitral tribunal (article 24).
The time saved is real: terms of reference frequently consumed six to ten weeks, between successive drafts and discussions on how to formulate the issues. The shift in burden is just as real. What the terms of reference forced parties to crystallise two or three months after transmission of the file must now be clear in the request and the answer.
The case management conference leads to a procedural order fixing the timetable, the arrangements for exchanging submissions and producing documents, and the main evidential options. It is the moment when a well prepared party imposes its tempo, and when a badly prepared party accepts a timetable it will not keep. Thirty days after transmission of the file means, in practice, preparation that began before the request was even filed.
3. New claims, now subject to authorisation
After the initial case management conference, no party may make new claims without the authorisation of the arbitral tribunal, which decides having regard in particular to the nature of those claims, the stage of the proceedings, the impact on costs and any other relevant circumstance (article 25). The conference thus becomes a procedural cut off, which the terms of reference previously were in a looser way.
For the claimant, the rule requires complete quantification and a settled case theory from the outset. A head of loss discovered during the expert process, an additional damages claim, a late counterclaim: each will have to pass a filter, and the tribunal will assess the impact on costs and timetable, which is what will often lead it to refuse.
For the respondent the effect is symmetrical. Jurisdictional objections, arguments that the clause is not binding, counterclaims, all must be raised immediately. A defence is prepared in days, not weeks, and the company that waits for the full statement of claim before mobilising its teams has already lost the margin the previous rules allowed it.
4. Early determination of manifestly unmeritorious claims
The 2026 Rules enshrine an early determination mechanism allowing the tribunal to dismiss a claim or defence that is manifestly without merit, or manifestly outside its jurisdiction (article 30). The application may be made at any stage, and the tribunal retains broad discretion on whether to entertain it.
The threshold is deliberately high. The adverb manifestly is not a stylistic flourish: this is not common law summary judgment allowing a serious question to be decided on the papers, but a tool for eliminating untenable claims. An inflated claim designed to drive up the advance on costs and to weigh on negotiation, a dilatory jurisdictional objection, an argument with no contractual basis, all fall within the scope. A debated question of interpretation does not.
Strategic use is therefore narrow, and the cost of failure real. A rejected application for early determination consumes time, money and part of the credit a party enjoys before the tribunal. It is reserved for situations where the absence of merit can be shown in a few pages, without expert evidence.
5. The expedited procedure, threshold raised to four million dollars
The expedited procedure applies automatically, unless the parties agree otherwise, where the amount in dispute does not exceed 4 million US dollars for arbitration agreements concluded on or after 1 June 2026. Earlier agreements remain subject to the threshold in force at their date: 3 million dollars for those concluded between 1 January 2021 and 31 May 2026, 2 million for those concluded between 1 March 2017 and 31 December 2020 (article 1(3) of Appendix V). The expedited procedure features a sole arbitrator, condensed submissions, a largely documentary process and an award expected within six months of the initial case management conference.
This increase is not symbolic. It moves a substantial share of corporate cases into the expedited regime, those between three and four million dollars, which until now fell under the ordinary procedure with, where appropriate, three arbitrators. For an exporter or an industrial supplier, that is the range where most price balance and non conformity disputes sit. The ICC recorded 169 cases under the expedited procedure in 2025 alone, before this increase.
Parties retain control of the regime, but only if they exercise it. They may exclude it by express stipulation, or on the contrary extend it above the threshold. A silent clause amounts to acceptance, which is the opposite of what many companies imagine: they believe they keep the right to ask for three arbitrators when the day comes, whereas that right is lost at signature.
A worked example shows what is at stake. A supplier claiming 3.4 million dollars of unpaid balance under a clause signed in 2025 falls under the ordinary procedure, the threshold applicable to that clause being 3 million, and may therefore, depending on the drafting, obtain three arbitrators. The same dispute, under a clause signed in September 2026, moves to the expedited track: sole arbitrator, six months, largely documentary process. The contract has not changed, nor has the amount, but the proceedings that follow bear no resemblance to the earlier ones.
6. The very expedited procedure, three months by agreement
The Rules create a very expedited procedure, available by agreement of all parties and without any ceiling on amount (article 33 and Appendix VI). Its logic is brutal: sole arbitrator, case management conference within days of the tribunal’s constitution, submissions confined to periods of around twenty to thirty days, award within three months of that conference, and no hearing or witnesses if the tribunal considers that possible.
It suits a legally simple dispute with a narrow documentary base: a contested payment default on a single ground, the application of a price formula, a call on a guarantee. It does not suit a construction dispute, a complex loss assessment, or any case calling for adversarial expert evidence.
The decisive point is the timing of consent. Obtaining the opposing party’s agreement after the dispute has arisen is improbable, since delay almost always benefits one side. A company wanting to preserve this route must therefore consent to it in the contract, by a stipulation opening the very expedited procedure for certain categories of dispute, typically payment claims.
7. The emergency arbitrator, orders without notice and non signatories
The emergency arbitrator mechanism, which allows an interim measure to be obtained before the arbitral tribunal is constituted, is set out in Appendix IV to the 2026 Rules. The emergency arbitrator is appointed in principle within two days of receipt of the application, and decides within around fifteen days of receiving the file.
Two developments matter. First, the emergency arbitrator may issue a preliminary order without prior notice to the party targeted, where warning that party would compromise the effectiveness of the measure, which is aimed primarily at asset dissipation and destruction of evidence. The application and exhibits are transmitted immediately afterwards, the parties are heard without delay, and the order may be modified or discharged in the light of their observations.
Second, the mechanism is available against a party that did not sign the arbitration agreement, where the President of the Court considers, on the information in the application, that an arbitration agreement may bind it (article 1(2) of Appendix IV). Within a group of companies, that extension changes the picture: the measure can target the entity that actually holds the asset, and not merely the signatory shell.
8. Disclosure, third party funding, confidentiality and award deadlines
The Rules strengthen the arbitrators’ disclosure regime and move part of the burden onto the parties, who must provide the list of persons and entities relevant to that obligation, any doubt being resolved in favour of disclosure (article 12). The same provision requires disclosure of the existence of a third party with an economic interest in the outcome, which covers funding of the case by a fund.
Confidentiality is the subject of a deliberate choice: the Rules impose on arbitrators a confidentiality obligation covering everything relating to the arbitration, save for matters in the public domain, agreement of the parties, legal obligation or the need to protect a right (article 12(8)), but they do not impose the same general obligation on the parties themselves. Those wanting real confidentiality must stipulate it, in the contract or in the procedural order.
Finally, the time limit for the award is no longer uniform. It is fixed and, where appropriate, extended by the President of the Court according to the procedural timetable of the particular case (article 34), the practice of reducing the fees of a tribunal whose delay is unjustified being maintained, as is the Court’s scrutiny of the draft award before it is issued. For a legal department, the timetable set at the first conference ceases to be indicative: it becomes the measure of the tribunal’s diligence.
The scale annexed to the Rules follows the same drive for precision. The filing fee remains 5,000 dollars, for the request for arbitration as for an application for consolidation (articles 5(4) and 8(3)), and emergency arbitrator proceedings now cost 50,000 dollars, made up of 12,500 in administrative expenses and 37,500 in fees and expenses, the figure of 40,000 dollars still commonly quoted corresponding to an earlier scale. Above all, there is no longer a single cap on administrative expenses: the calculation is made band by band, with a flat 180,000 dollars above 515 million dollars in dispute.
Frequently asked questions
Should ICC clauses signed before 1 June 2026 be renegotiated
Not systematically. The 2026 Rules apply of their own force to arbitrations commenced after that date, without any amendment to the clauses. A re-reading is called for on two points: the expedited procedure threshold, which remains the one in force at the date the agreement was concluded, and stipulations drafted around terms of reference that have become optional. A clause organising steps around that document deserves an amendment, at the next commercial renegotiation.
Can terms of reference still be requested
Yes. The tribunal retains the option of drawing them up where it considers them useful to case management, and the parties may suggest this at the initial case management conference. It is sometimes justified in multi party cases or linked contract cases, where defining the issues requires preliminary work. But it is no longer a compulsory stage, and it should not be relied upon to crystallise claims that were not made in the request.
How do you prepare for a case management conference held within thirty days
Before filing the request, not after. That means having settled the case theory, the quantification, the list of decisive documents, the identity of the witnesses and the scope of the expert evidence before seising the Secretariat. The timetable proposed at that conference must be realistic against the company’s internal resources, because it will serve as the reference throughout the proceedings, and a timetable accepted and then missed is paid for in credibility before the tribunal.
Can early determination end an entire arbitration
Rarely, and it should be treated with suspicion as a promise. It allows a claim or defence that is manifestly without merit, or manifestly outside the tribunal’s jurisdiction, to be dismissed. Where the whole of the opposing case falls into that category, proceedings can indeed stop early. In most cases it serves rather to narrow the scope of the dispute and, in doing so, the amount of the advances and the cost of the evidential phase.
Is third party funding allowed in ICC arbitration
Yes, and the 2026 Rules organise transparency rather than prohibition: the existence of a third party with an economic interest in the outcome must be disclosed, so that arbitrators’ conflicts of interest can be checked. For a claimant company there is nothing shameful in that disclosure. It should however be anticipated, because it tells the opposing party about the financial structure of the case, which sometimes has a bearing on negotiation.