Anti‑Corruption and Integrity Outlook 2026: Iceland
Table of contents
Iceland has no unified anti-corruption strategy. Rather than having one central government body responsible for mitigating integrity risks in the public sector, Iceland has different institutions responsible for mitigating public integrity risks in their corresponding fields.
The Act on Protection Against Conflicts-of-Interest in Iceland’s Cabinet regulates lobbying activities, and the Prime Minister’s Office oversees transparency of lobbying activities in addition to collecting and publishing interest declarations for members of the Government. The National Audit Office has the mandate to oversee the financing of political parties and election campaigns and is an independent body with financial accountability to the parliament (Alþingi). Additionally, the Information Committee is the independent body ruling on requests for access and reuse of public information, while the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation is responsible for open data policy.
Note: 2025 data or latest year available. Data for judicial integrity, prosecutorial integrity and disciplinary system are not available.
Source: OECD Public Integrity Indicators database (data extracted on 7 March 2026).
Data on where Iceland’s integrity system is strongest and could be most improved can be found at the link below:
Note: 2025 data or latest year available
Source: OECD Public Integrity Indicators database (data extracted on 7 March 2026).
On average, OECD countries fulfil 38% of OECD criteria on the quality of the strategic framework and 32% on implementation. However, Iceland has no national anti-corruption strategy. Having a strategic framework based on evidence and outlining objectives and priorities is essential to mitigate corruption risks in the public sector.
Note: 2025 data or latest year available
Source: OECD Public Integrity Indicators database (data extracted on 7 March 2026).
Iceland fulfils 20% of criteria on regulations and 44% on practice, compared to the OECD average of 43% and 38%, respectively.
Iceland’s regulations define lobbying activities but do not define which actors are considered lobbyists. Iceland has not established sanctions for breaches of lobbying regulations. In practice, however, Iceland has a publicly accessible lobbying register, and a supervisory function in central government (The Prime Minister’s Office) oversees transparency of lobbying activities. Information disclosed by lobbyists in the register includes their name, organisations and domain of intervention. The code of conduct that regulates interactions between public officials and lobbyists is supported by practical examples of undesirable behaviours and situations.
The Act on Registration of Beneficial Owners requires entities to notify the Tax Administration of their beneficial owners as defined under Iceland’s anti-money laundering legislation. They must provide detailed information, including name, domicile, ID or birth date, citizenship, ownership details, and supporting documents proving beneficial ownership. Beneficial owners must also be reported when a company is newly registered in the company register. The register is publicly available.
Note: 2025 data or latest year available
Source: OECD Public Integrity Indicators database (data extracted on 7 March 2026).
Iceland has fulfilled 44% of criteria on regulations, and 33% on practice, compared to the OECD average of 80% and 45%, respectively.
Iceland’s regulations define circumstances and relationships that can lead to conflict-of-interest situations for public officials and require members of Government and parliament to submit interest declarations as a minimum upon entry and any renewal or change in public office. A similar obligation also exists for top-tier civil servants of the executive branch. However, there is no requirement for judges to submit interest declarations at regular intervals, and Iceland’s regulations do not establish a procedure for verifying the content of interest declarations.
In practice, all members of the Government have submitted interest declarations in the past six years, and all top-tier civil servants of the executive branch have submitted interest declarations in the past four years. However, the submission rate for Members of Parliament was below 90% for the past six years. Declarations are not verified according to a risk-based approach, and Iceland does not collect data on how many of the declarations were verified by the responsible authority.
Note: 2025 data or latest year available
Source: OECD Public Integrity Indicators database (data extracted on 7 March 2026).
Iceland fulfils 90% of criteria on regulations and 57% of criteria in practice, compared to the OECD averages of 76% and 58%, respectively.
Regulations in Iceland define sanctions for breaches of political finance and election campaign rules and ban anonymous donations and contributions from foreign enterprises, foreign states, and publicly owned enterprises. Furthermore, all political parties and candidates are obliged to report their finances during election campaigns, and political parties must make their financial reports public.
In practice, as an independent body, the National Audit Office, has the mandate to oversee the financing of political parties and election campaigns and has certified auditors on its payroll. However, Iceland does not publish aggregated data on the number of cases related to breaches of political finance regulations, the number of investigations conducted, or the types of sanctions issued. While financial reports from all political parties are publicly available, not all political parties represented in parliament have submitted annual accounts within the timelines defined by national legislation for the past five years, and not all parties have submitted accounts related to elections within the timelines defined by national legislation for the past two election cycles.
Note: 2025 data or latest year available
Source: OECD Public Integrity Indicators database (data extracted on 7 March 2026).
Iceland fulfils 67% of criteria on regulations and 69% on practice, compared to the OECD average of 72% and 62%, respectively.
Iceland’s regulations establish that all public institutions and private persons carrying out public duties are holders of public information and that everyone, including non-citizens and legal persons, has the right to access information in all the forms available. Regulations also establish the right to appeal in the case of refusal or inactivity of an administrative agency, there are statutory deadlines for processing requests for information, and information holders are required to provide information in the requested format.
In practice, Iceland proactively discloses the following datasets: consolidated versions of all primary laws, the state budget for the current calendar year, the results of the last national elections, legislative proposals of the government, agendas of Government sessions, ministers’ agendas, public tenders and their results, the company registry, the land registry, and asset and interest declarations of ministers and top civil servants in the executive branch. However, salaries of individual senior civil servants and aggregated data on lobbying and access to information requests are not publicly available online.
Data not available
Data not available
Data not available
This work is published under the responsibility of the Secretary-General of the OECD. The opinions expressed and arguments employed herein do not necessarily reflect the official views of the Member countries of the OECD.
This document, as well as any data and map included herein, are without prejudice to the status of or sovereignty over any territory, to the delimitation of international frontiers and boundaries and to the name of any territory, city or area.
The statistical data for Israel are supplied by and under the responsibility of the relevant Israeli authorities. The use of such data by the OECD is without prejudice to the status of the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and Israeli settlements in the West Bank under the terms of international law.
Kosovo: This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244/99 and the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on Kosovo’s declaration of independence.
The full book is available in English: OECD (2026), Anti-Corruption and Integrity Outlook 2026: Harnessing the Integrity Advantage, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/16708b78-en.
© OECD 2026
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
This work is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. By using this work, you accept to be bound by the terms of this licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Attribution – you must cite the work.
Translations – you must cite the original work, identify changes to the original and add the following text: In the event of any discrepancy between the original work and the translation, only the text of the original work should be considered valid.
Adaptations – you must cite the original work and add the following text: This is an adaptation of an original work by the OECD. The opinions expressed and arguments employed in this adaptation should not be reported as representing the official views of the OECD or of its Member countries.
Third-party material – the licence does not apply to third-party material in the work. If using such material, you are responsible for obtaining permission from the third party and for any claims of infringement.
You must not use the OECD logo, visual identity or cover image without express permission or suggest the OECD endorses your use of the work.
Any dispute arising under this licence shall be settled by arbitration in accordance with the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) Arbitration Rules 2012. The seat of arbitration shall be Paris (France). The number of arbitrators shall be one.