UK SORA Release Date and Timeline: What Drone Operators Need to Know

If you held an OSC-based Operational Authorisation when UK SORA arrived, the timeline is the bit that decides what you actually have to do this year. The framework switched on a single date, the old door closed the day before, and the CAA wrote three different reapplication windows for live OSC holders depending on when their authorisation was set to expire. The dates are not interchangeable.

Here is the full release timeline, the three OSC reapplication windows, and what the dates still mean for drone operators sitting on legacy OSC paperwork in April 2026.

UK SORA went live on 23 April 2025 and the OSC application service closed the day before

The headline date is 23 April 2025. That is the day UK SORA (Specific Operations Risk Assessment) replaced the older Operating Safety Case method as the route to a non-PDRA01 Operational Authorisation. The CAA had been signalling the change for months; the switch itself happened overnight.

The OSC method was governed by CAP 722A Operational Risk Assessment, and from 23 April 2025 every fresh non-PDRA01 application has been written under the SORA framework instead. The OSC application service did not run in parallel for a transition period — it closed to new submissions after 22 April 2025. If you missed that day, the OSC route was gone the morning after.

For new entrants to the Specific Category — that is, anyone whose first authorisation outside PDRA01 was issued from that date forward — the OSC was never an option. UK SORA is the entry door, and the published CAA transition guidance on moving from OSC to UK SORA confirms the cut-off.

Existing OSC authorisations remain valid until their listed expiry date, and variations are still allowed

The transition did not invalidate live authorisations. If your OSC-based Operational Authorisation listed an expiry date in 2025, 2026, or beyond, you keep flying under that paperwork until it runs out. The OSC authorisation remains valid until its expiry date, and the conditions written on the certificate are the conditions that still bind your operation today.

Variations to a current OSC authorisation are also still on the table. If your operation has changed — a new operating location, a new drone model, a tweak to the operating limits — the CAA accepts variation applications against the live OSC authorisation in the normal way until expiry. You do not have to swap to UK SORA mid-cycle just to vary an OSC.

The catch is what happens at renewal. When the OSC runs out, the reapplication is a fresh UK SORA application, not a tweaked OSC. That is where the three CAA reapplication windows come into play.

The CAA published three OSC reapplication windows tied to specific expiry dates

The CAA's transition guidance set out three windows, keyed to when an OSC authorisation was due to expire. The window your authorisation fell into determined which application route you could legally take, and whether the CAA would contact you proactively or whether the move was on you.

The pre-22-July window was the only one that gave OSC holders a legal way to reapply through the OSC framework one last time. It required the application to be in by 22 April 2025, the day the OSC service closed. After that day, there was no OSC reapplication anywhere — expiry or no expiry.

The middle window covered drone operators whose OSC ran out across the summer of 2025, when neither the legacy framework nor the new SORA framework was a comfortable fit. The CAA committed to making contact with drone operators in this window directly, but the new application still had to be a UK SORA application submitted from 23 April 2025 forward.

The third window — expiries after 31 August 2025 — covers most live OSC authorisations still in circulation today. The CAA's commitment is to reach out before expiry, but the practical reality is that the reapplication is on the operator. Most authorisations in this group will renew under UK SORA, and the timing window the CAA accepts is broadly the same as a PDRA01 renewal — up to three months before expiry.

In April 2026 the OSC route exists only inside legacy authorisations winding down

A year on from the release date, the live picture for drone operators is straightforward. UK SORA is the only route to a fresh non-PDRA01 authorisation. The OSC framework still exists on paper, but only inside the live OSC-based Operational Authorisations that have not yet hit their expiry date. Every OSC authorisation issued before 23 April 2025 is now somewhere on its winding-down trajectory.

Any OSC that listed a 2025 expiry has already passed through one of the three reapplication windows. Any OSC that listed a 2026 expiry is in or close to its three-month renewal window right now — an OSC expiring in late July 2026, for example, is reapplication-eligible from late April 2026. By late 2027 the last OSC authorisations issued before the cut-off will have wound out, and UK SORA will be the only Specific Category authorisation paperwork in active circulation outside PDRA01.

For drone operators sitting on legacy OSC paperwork right now, that timeline is the one to plan against. If your OSC expires in the next six months, the operations manual you wrote for OSC is a starting point, not a finish line — the reapplication has to be rebuilt for the SORA framework's SAIL and containment language. The detail of what changes between the two routes lives in our PDRA01 vs UK SORA comparison and in the how to obtain Operational Authorisation guide.

Drone-in-a-box and BVLOS operators saw the practical impact of the release date first

The release-date timing hit some drone operators harder than others. Anyone whose existing operation already needed a non-PDRA01 authorisation — Beyond Visual Line of Sight, item drops, swarm work, flights above the 120 metre altitude ceiling, or close-to-crowds work — was sitting on an OSC at the moment of the switch, and the renewal cycle was the first big test of the new SORA application portal.

Operators running drone-in-a-box operations — the autonomous fixed-base systems used for security patrols and remote inspection — were a particularly visible test case. These deployments are almost always BVLOS, often involve repeat sorties from a single base, and carry a year-on-year renewal cadence that put many of them straight into the post-31-August reapplication window. For the drone pilots running those operations, the SORA renewal was their first encounter with the new SAIL and containment paperwork.

The wider UK drone laws picture has not changed in any other meaningful way since the SORA release date. The Air Navigation Order 2016, the Open / Specific / Certified category structure, the UK Regulations (EU) 2019/945 and 2019/947, and PDRA01 all sit where they did. The release date was a swap of the Specific Category application method, not a re-engineering of the regime around it.

If you held an OSC at the time of the switch, the practical question is which of the three reapplication windows your authorisation fell into, and whether you have already renewed under SORA or whether the renewal is still ahead of you. If you had an OSC application open with the CAA at the moment of the cut-off, the contact route the CAA published was a single email address — uksora@caa.co.uk — for transition difficulties.

Got a borderline OSC-to-SORA scenario you want covered — an authorisation expiring soon, a variation you are mid-way through, a renewal window question, or a fresh SORA application you are scoping? Drop a note to peter@hiredronepilot.uk and I will come back to you directly. If you prefer the video version of this explainer, the comments are open on YouTube.