China to Lock Unregistered Civil Drones Out of Flight From May 2026
China will block unregistered civil drones from flying under mandatory national standards taking effect May 1, 2026.
The rules are set out in two national standards: GB 46761-2025, covering real-name registration and activation of civil unmanned aircraft, and GB 46750-2025, covering real-time operational identification. Both were approved and issued in late 2025 by China’s market regulator, with the Civil Aviation Administration of China acting as the organizing authority. Together, they turn registration and identification from administrative requirements into technical conditions for flight.
The registration standard makes activation the central enforcement tool. A drone must be unable to fly before activation and after deactivation, tying the aircraft, the manufacturer’s system and CAAC’s centralized real-name registration platform into one control chain. Required data includes the owner’s identity, product name, model, unique product code or serial number, and intended use category.
The operational identification standard requires civil drones to transmit identity, position, speed and status data continuously from power-on through flight and landing, with updates at least once every second. Aircraft must support both local broadcast identification and network-based reporting through cellular, wired terrestrial or satellite links to centralized monitoring infrastructure. The identification function cannot be manually disabled, and a failure before takeoff must prevent startup, while a failure in flight must trigger a safety response such as hovering, return-to-home or landing.
The transition will affect one of the world’s largest drone fleets. CAAC figures for 2024 counted nearly 20,000 certified drone operators, more than 2 million registered drones, over 26 million recorded flight hours and a peak of about 26,000 aircraft airborne at the same time. New production drones must comply from May 1, 2026, while already-sold aircraft get until about June 2027 for back-registration and activation, and retrofitted aircraft face a longer compliance window expected to close around May 2029.
China’s approach also removes the common sub-250-gram exemption used in many overseas regimes, except for narrowly defined self-powered flight toys that meet low-speed, low-altitude and short-range criteria. The standards create a verified data layer for low-altitude airspace management, beyond-visual-line-of-sight approvals, route control, emergency response and commercial licensing. The result is a major shift for operators and manufacturers: access to China’s civil drone market will now depend on built-in registration, continuous identification and direct technical compliance with state-run systems.