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Final ruleTakes effect June 12, 2028

Wireless Emergency Alerts and the Emergency Alert System

Built by the Tribune's code from the Federal Register. No AI wrote this page. Published in the Federal Register Jan. 20, 2026. Document 2026-00960. Updated Nov. 15, 2026.

What it does

In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (Commission) announces that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has approved a non-substantive change to the information collection associated with Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) rules adopted in a Report and Order issued by the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau (Multilingual WEA Implementation Report and Order). These rules describe how commercial mobile service providers who participate in WEA (Participating CMS Providers) must implement multilingual templates for the most commonly issued and most time-sensitive types of alerts in English, the next thirteen most commonly spoken languages in the United States, and American Sign Language (ASL). Specifically, Participating CMS Providers shall support the pre-scripted templates published in 90 FR 57288 for eighteen emergency events. For English and the thirteen written languages, Participating CMS Providers must support the inclusion of four fillable elements that customize the pre-scripted alert templates: the name of the sending agency, the location pertaining to the alert message, the time when the emergency conditions described in the alert are expected to end, and an optional URL. When an alert originator sends a non-English template message, Participating CMS Providers must display the corresponding pre-scripted alert message in English after the non-English message.

The Federal Communications Commission's summary, as published in the Federal Register.

What changed in the regulation

1 part of Title 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations:

47 CFR 10

Compared with

The Federal Communications Commission has published 59 final rules in 2026 so far, compared with 78 in all of 2025.

Counted by the Tribune from Federal Register records since Jan. 1, 2025.

What happens next and when

Effective June 12, 2028. The amendments to 47 CFR 10.480 (amendatory instruction 2) and 47 CFR 10.500(e) (amendatory instruction 3), published at 90 FR 57288 on December 10, 2025, are effective on June 12, 2028.

The agency's dates, word for word.

Document number2026-00960
ActionFinal rule; announcement of compliance date.
AgenciesFederal Communications Commission
PublishedJan. 20, 2026
Effective dateJune 12, 2028

Source: the Federal Register (public domain). The document in the Federal Register