Ukraine

National jurisdiction · as of 2026-09-06

Ukraine's age-gating law sits in its general media statute rather than a dedicated age-verification act.

Law No. 2849-IX "On Media" (in force since 31 March 2023) requires a video-sharing platform provider to verify a user's age before granting access to content that may harm a child's physical, mental or moral development and to make a parental-control system available, and separately restricts audiovisual programming rated for an audience of at least 16 or 18 to fixed broadcast windows unless a conditional-access system is used instead.

Ukraine has no freestanding social-media minor-access statute, no app-store or device-level age-verification law, and no age-appropriate design code outside this media-sector scheme.

01

Instruments on record

Law on Media, Video-Sharing Platform and Child-Protection Duties

In force

Law of Ukraine No. 2849-IX "On Media", 13 December 2022, arts. 18, 23, 42

Effective 2023-03-31 · Applies to both

Article 18 defines a provider of a video-sharing platform as a person supplying a service, whether a website or another form, built on a publicly accessible information repository under the provider's control and client software giving access to it.

Article 23(1)(3) obliges that provider to verify a user's age before granting access to information that may harm a child's physical, mental or moral development, and to make available a parental-control system to protect children from such information. Article 42 separately restricts a linear or on-demand audiovisual program rated for an audience of at least 16 to the period between 22:00 and 06:00, and a program rated for an audience of at least 18 to the period between 24:00 and 05:00.

A provider may instead use a conditional-access system in place of those broadcast windows. Article 42 also lists the categories of content that trigger the child-protection restriction, including violence, self-harm, cruelty to animals, glorification of crime, promotion of substance abuse, profanity, gambling inducement and graphic depiction of the dead or dying.

Verification methodsparental consent
Enforcement bodyNational Council of Ukraine on Television and Radio Broadcasting (Natsіonalna rada Ukrayiny z pytan telebachennya i radіomovlennya), an independent permanent collegial state body exercising state regulation, supervision and control in the media sphere, art. 1(33)

Source: Full text of law