What Is the G7 Post-Quantum Call to Action 2026?

The G7 post-quantum call to action 2026, titled Preparing for the Post-Quantum Era: A Call to Action, is a non-binding guidance document. The G7 Cybersecurity Working Group published it together with CISA in September 2026, and it urges governments and organizations to start moving to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) now instead of waiting for quantum computers to arrive.

The document is short and mostly written for governments. For operators of operational technology (OT) and critical infrastructure, it matters because of what follows from it: national roadmaps, procurement rules and supervisory expectations. This article covers what the call to action says, its legal weight, and how an OT operator can turn it into a workable plan for the encrypted connections between sites, cloud environments and remote users.

What is the G7 Preparing for the Post-Quantum Era Call to Action?

It is a G7 statement that treats the move to PQC as urgent and sets out five priorities for governments and industry. According to CISA, CISA and the Group of Seven (G7) Cyber Security Working Group released Preparing for the Post-Quantum Era: A Call to Action highlighting the urgent need for organizations and governments to begin transitioning to post-quantum cryptography (PQC). CISA’s listing shows a publish date of 3 September 2026.

The G7 Cyber Security Working Group’s call to action outlines five priorities for a successful transition to PQC: raising awareness of quantum risks and the importance of PQC; developing national strategies that support PQC adoption and integration; advancing research and development for quantum-safe technologies; fostering public-private partnerships to share expertise and resources; and integrating PQC into cybersecurity requirements and procurement processes.

The call to action builds on the G7 Cybersecurity Working Group Declaration adopted earlier in 2026. That declaration was agreed under France’s G7 Presidency, and with the leadership of the Agence Nationale de la Sécurité des Systèmes d’Information (ANSSI), and in it the G7 considers the transition to PQC an urgent priority, that organizations can no longer afford to postpone. The working group’s presidency is due to pass to the United States of America for 2027.

Which G7 bodies are involved?

Two G7 groups publish on PQC, and they are easy to mix up. The G7 Cybersecurity Working Group covers digital security policy across sectors. Before the call to action it issued a Statement on Preparing For a Post-Quantum Cryptography Migration. This publication, intended for the technical management of medium- to large-sized organizations, provides guidance for a typical transition project.

The G7 Cyber Expert Group is the finance-sector body. It seeks to improve the cyber resiliency of the financial sector through preparedness, a consensus of the threat landscape, and a shared approach to mitigating risk. Its PQC roadmap statement outlines a coordinated approach to help the financial sector move to PQC, focusing on system inventory, risk-based planning, migration, testing, and ongoing checks. It also provides suggested timelines to reduce “harvest now, decrypt later” risks. Energy, water and transport operators are not covered by the financial roadmap. Even so, its sequence (inventory, risk-based planning, migration, testing) is a good template for an OT programme.

What does the G7 post-quantum guidance recommend for critical infrastructure operators?

The call to action does not give operators a technical checklist. It asks them to take quantum risk seriously now, work with government, and expect PQC to appear in security requirements and procurement. For more detailed operational guidance, critical infrastructure operators are pointed to national agencies such as the CISA Post-Quantum Cryptography Initiative.

CISA’s position is that although quantum computing technology capable of breaking modern public-key encryption does not yet exist, government agencies and critical infrastructure entities-including both public and private sector organizations-must begin preparing now. The agency also says it works with Sector Risk Management Agencies (SRMA) to assist critical infrastructure owners and operators in developing PQC migration planning.

US officials have been making this point for several years. When CISA, NSA and NIST published their quantum-readiness factsheet, then CISA Director Jen Easterly said: “It is imperative for all organizations, especially critical infrastructure, to begin preparing now for migration to post-quantum cryptography,” and Rob Joyce, then Director of NSA Cybersecurity, added that “The key is to be on this journey today and not wait until the last minute.”

Why connections between sites, cloud and remote users come first

Data in transit carries the most time-sensitive part of the quantum risk. Encrypted traffic that crosses the public internet or a carrier network can be recorded today and decrypted later, once a capable quantum computer exists. The vulnerable part is public-key key establishment, not bulk encryption. NIST notes that NIST-approved symmetric primitives providing at least 128 bits of classical security continue to be approved.

For an OT operator, this points to a specific set of paths: WAN links between control centres and substations or pumping stations, historian and telemetry replication into a cloud environment, and remote engineering or vendor access. Engineering drawings, network topologies and process recipes often stay sensitive for decades. That makes these links the obvious starting point.

Is the G7 post-quantum statement legally binding?

No. The G7 call to action is a political and technical statement with no legal force, and it creates no obligations for any company. Its influence works indirectly, through the national strategies and procurement rules it asks governments to adopt.

Many of the instruments it points to are also non-binding, so operators should look carefully at what actually applies to them. The table below compares the main ones.

How does the G7 call to action relate to national PQC roadmaps and procurement requirements?

The call to action asks G7 governments to build national PQC strategies and write PQC into procurement. The EU and the US already have instruments in place that do this, and those instruments are where the concrete dates and buying rules come from.

The EU: NIS Cooperation Group PQC Roadmap

Commission Recommendation (EU) 2024/1101 called for a roadmap that should lead to the deployment across the Union of Post-Quantum Cryptography technologies into existing public administration systems and critical infrastructures via hybrid schemes. A PQC workstream in the NIS Cooperation Group then produced the roadmap, and EU Member States, supported by the Commission, adopted the Coordinated Implementation Roadmap for the Transition to Post-Quantum Cryptography in June 2025.

The roadmap sets three milestones:

• End of 2026: All Member States should start transitioning to PQC by the end of 2026.
• End of 2030: the protection of high-risk use cases should be transitioned to PQC as soon as possible, no later than by the end of 2030. A Commission presentation lists those high-risk cases as critical infrastructure (eg water, energy, health care, finance and transportation).
• 31 December 2035: All of the migrations should be completed for every risk level.

If you operate OT in the EU, you should plan on the 2030 date as the one that applies to you. The same Commission presentation also expects quantum-safe software and firmware upgrades are enabled by default by 2030. That expectation affects how you assess suppliers’ update channels.

The US: NIST timeline and federal procurement

In the US, NIST IR 8547 sets the timeline for removing quantum-vulnerable algorithms from NIST standards. Public-key schemes at 112-bit security strength are deprecated after 2030, disallowed after 2035, and stronger classical parameters are also disallowed after 2035. On the purchasing side, Executive Order 14306 directed DHS, acting through CISA, to publish a list of product categories of widely available products that support post-quantum cryptography (PQC). The list includes networking hardware and software, and CISA advises that organizations should acquire only PQC-capable products when planning acquisitions and procuring products in these categories.

CISA’s Acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala put the procurement point directly: “To stay ahead of these emerging risks, organizations must prioritize the procurement of PQC-capable technologies.”

Hybrid and crypto-agile as the common thread

Across these documents, two technical expectations keep coming back. The first is hybrid key establishment, which combines a classical and a post-quantum algorithm. France’s ANSSI recommends a transition plan, in which PQC algorithms must be hybridized with well-known pre-quantum algorithms and systems must be crypto-agile. The second is the ability to change algorithms later without replacing hardware. Both should be written into tender specifications now. OT equipment bought in 2026 may still be running in 2040.

What should an OT operator do first in response to the G7 post-quantum guidance?

Start with a cryptographic inventory of the communication paths that leave a trusted zone. Then rank them by how long the data needs to stay confidential and how hard the endpoints are to change. Strategy documents and vendor roadmaps can wait until you know where your quantum-vulnerable key exchanges actually happen.

1. Map the paths, not just the assets

OT asset inventories usually list devices, not cryptographic sessions. Build a separate list of every encrypted path: site-to-site tunnels, links from the edge to cloud or data centre, remote access for staff and integrators, and any links that carry data out of air-gapped segments. For each path, record the key exchange in use, who controls each end and whether the endpoint can be updated.

2. Rank by data lifetime and exposure

A path that carries setpoints that change every second is a different risk from one that replicates design files or safety documentation. Give priority to paths that cross networks you do not control and carry information that will still matter after 2030.

3. Separate what you can fix at the endpoint from what you cannot

Many PLCs, RTUs and protection relays will never get PQC firmware. For those, protecting the network path is more realistic than upgrading the device. One way to do this is a network-layer encryption gateway at each end of a link. Quantum Network’s Quantum Gateway is one example: it encrypts at Layer 3 using a hybrid key agreement that combines a classical algorithm with ML-KEM (FIPS 203). It needs no software on the equipment behind it and works alongside existing firewalls and routers.

4. Add PQC to procurement now

This puts the fifth G7 priority into practice. Require new network and remote-access equipment to support NIST-standardised post-quantum key establishment, hybrid operation and algorithm replacement through updates. Also ask how updates are delivered in segregated or air-gapped environments, and what happens to support when a maintenance contract ends.

5. Test against control-system timing

Post-quantum key exchange uses larger messages than classical schemes. Before rolling it out across many sites, test latency, rekeying behaviour and recovery after a link failure on a representative path, especially where protocols are sensitive to timing.

6. Assign ownership and report against a date

Pick the milestone that applies to you, for example the EU’s end-2030 date for high-risk use cases, and report progress against it to the board. A PQC programme without a named owner and a deadline tends to stall once the first inventory is finished.