Czech National Bank CASP Migration: 2026 Practitioner Notes

What changed on 1 January 2026

For nine years — from the original Czech AML Act amendment in 2017 through the end of 2025 — crypto-asset service providers in the Czech Republic operated under registrations granted by the Trade Licensing Office (Živnostenský úřad). The Trade Licensing Office regime was administrative rather than supervisory: registration was paper-based, processed on a fixed timeline, and lightly reviewed. Most Czech VASPs registered in 2018-2024 did so without substantive engagement from the regulator.

That ended on 1 January 2026. MiCA Article 67(1) requires crypto-asset supervision to sit with a competent financial-services authority. The Trade Licensing Office, whose remit covers business registration generally, is not such an authority. Czech transposition assigned supervision to the Czech National Bank (Česká národní banka), which already supervises banks, payment institutions, and securities firms.

The change in supervisor changes everything about the regime. The ČNB applies substance, fitness-and-probity, capital, and ICT resilience review at the depth used for credit-institution authorisations. Files that would have cleared the Trade Licensing Office in days now spend six to eight months in ČNB review.

Who needs to file under the ČNB regime in 2026?

Three categories of firms need to file a CASP application with the ČNB before 1 July 2026:

1. Existing Trade Licensing Office registrants providing crypto-asset services on 30 December 2024. These firms qualify for the Article 143 transitional regime and continue operating during ČNB review.

2. Czech entities providing crypto-asset services from 1 January 2025 without prior Trade Licensing Office registration. These do not qualify for transitional continuity and must obtain ČNB authorisation before resuming operations.

3. New entrants establishing Czech CASP operations from 2026 forward. Standard new-entrant authorisation under MiCA Article 62.

The 1 July 2026 deadline is hard. Article 143 does not provide for extensions, and the ČNB has confirmed publicly that operating permission lapses for firms that have not filed by the deadline.

What the ČNB application contains

The ČNB CASP application is the full Article 62 dossier with two Czech-specific additions:

1. A Czech-language declaration of compliance with the 2025 Czech CASP Act, signed by the proposed resident director.

2. A statement of intended interaction with the Czech FAÚ (Financial Analytical Office) for AML reporting purposes, with the proposed reporting workflow.

The application is filed through the ČNB’s supervisory portal. The portal accepts file uploads in Czech and English; core governance documents must be in Czech (or in English with a notarised Czech translation). Supporting documentation may be in English with a Czech summary.

How long does the ČNB take in 2026?

Six to eight months from complete filing is the realistic 2026 average. The variance is driven by three factors:

• ČNB internal capacity. The bank is processing CASP files in addition to its existing supervisory workload. Q1-Q2 2026 files cleared faster than Q3-Q4 files are likely to.

• File quality. Pre-cleared files (where counsel has used the supervisory dialogue channel before submission) typically clear in 5-6 months. Files that have not been pre-cleared run to 8-9 months.

• Substance complexity. Files involving non-Czech directors, complex group structures, or unusual capital arrangements receive more information requests and longer review.

The 40-working-day statutory window under MiCA Article 63 applies but is paused by every information request. We have seen files where the cumulative pause exceeds the substantive review time — meaning the firm spent more elapsed time waiting for the firm to respond to ČNB requests than the ČNB spent reviewing the file itself.

The supervisory dialogue channel

Of the EU regulators handling material CASP volumes, the ČNB is the most open to supervisory dialogue before formal filing. The dialogue channel is informal, free, and substantive — counsel can email the ČNB authorisation desk with a specific structural question and typically receives a written response within ten working days indicating whether the proposed approach is workable.

This is genuinely valuable on edge cases. Counsel with active dialogue access can pre-flag substance concerns before they become deficiency notices. Counsel without active access cannot.

Pitfalls in the migration cohort

The migration cohort — existing Trade Licensing Office registrants filing under Article 143 — is the largest share of ČNB CASP files in 2026. Three patterns account for most of the deficiency notices:

1. Lifted Trade Licensing Office paperwork. Counsel that adapts existing registration documents to MiCA produces gaps — DORA ICT resilience, prudential capital evidence, conflict-of-interest matrix — that the ČNB flags as substantive deficiencies.

2. Outsourced Czech translation. Specialist translation agencies often produce Czech text that doesn’t fully match the English source. The ČNB notices these mismatches and issues information requests.

3. Underestimated substance review depth. Founders coming from the Trade Licensing Office regime expect a similar light-touch review under the ČNB and discover otherwise on filing.

Working with counsel on a Czech CASP file

The single most useful diagnostic on counsel quality is whether the counsel has Czech-language in-house drafting capability. Outsourced translation produces handoff errors that the ČNB notices.

The second diagnostic is active dialogue access at the ČNB authorisation desk. Hard to verify from a website but visible in conversation — counsel that has used the channel can describe specific ČNB positions on edge cases.

The firms in our index that have processed five or more Czech CASP files since the migration are listed in the related-firms section.