Expansion of the Competence of International Commercial Arbitration

On 21 May 2026, Law No. 4856-IX on the expansion of the jurisdiction of international arbitration came into force, introducing significant amendments to the Law of Ukraine “On International Commercial Arbitration.”

The primary objective of this Law is to enhance the state’s investment attractiveness and broaden the legal instruments available for protecting business rights.

Key innovations include:

• the list of disputes that may be heard by arbitration institutions has been expanded. International arbitration has been granted the power to resolve complex corporate and investment disputes that previously fell within the exclusive jurisdiction of the state courts;
• provision for the possibility of referring certain disputes in the capital markets sector to arbitration, in particular between bond administrators and issuers;
• provision for the parties to be able to expressly agree that the subject matter of the contract relates to more than one country, thereby enabling disputes that were not previously formally considered “international” to be referred to arbitration.

For more details on the main provisions of this Law, please see our previous Legal News dated 20 February 2025.