Iceland’s government will submit a bill to parliament in February 2027 introducing a permanent ban on commercial whaling, a move that would leave Norway and Japan as the only countries in the world still hunting whales commercially.

The government, which holds a majority in parliament, confirmed the bill on its website, saying it will include “a permanent ban on whaling.”

The announcement follows years of mounting scrutiny of Iceland’s whaling industry. 

A government-commissioned report published in 2023 found that harpooned whales could take up to two hours to die, prompting a temporary suspension of that year’s hunt. More recently, Icelandic veterinary authority MAST confirmed that a fin whale killed in June 2026 was struck four times and took more than 31 minutes to die – an incident campaigners say violated the country’s animal welfare and whaling regulations, and one that renewed calls for the government to impound the vessel involved and outlaw the hunt entirely.

Iceland’s minister of industries, Hanna Katrín Friðriksson, has called the country’s whaling laws outdated and voiced support for ending the hunt.

So far this year, as of September 8, 80 fin whales have been caught in Icelandic waters against a quota of up to 150, according to Humane World for Animals (HWA), which tracks the catches.

Wendy Higgins of HWA said the bill marks a “significant milestone” in efforts to end whaling. 

“There is considerable political and public support for this bill to ban commercial whaling, and compelling ethical, veterinary, legal and conservation reasons to hope it succeeds,” Higgins said. “Every whale killed by exploding harpoon in Icelandic waters is a tragic loss of life needlessly taken for an industry that has no purpose. A law to stop the killing can’t come soon enough.”

Fin whales, the main target of Iceland’s hunt, are classified as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Iceland’s sole remaining whaling company, Hvalur, run by Kristján Loftsson, holds a permit that runs until 2029; campaigners expect existing licences to be allowed to run their course even if the ban passes.

“One outcome we need to be prepared for is that whaling ends when those licences end, not on the day the law changes. Our work now is to make sure the bill says what it needs to say to bring the hunt to an end permanently,” 

Loftsson has recently sought new markets for whale products as demand from Japan falters, including plans to market whale-derived iron supplements. Critics, including the Animal Welfare Institute, have dismissed the venture as another attempt to justify the hunt.

Norway resumed commercial whaling in 1993 and Iceland in 2006, despite a 1986 international moratorium; Japan left the International Whaling Commission in 2019 and resumed commercial hunting in its own waters.

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