Track the GDPR dates and response clocks for applicability, rights requests, breach notification, DPIA review, prior consultation, transfer assessments, and retention checks.
Use this as an EU-level operating calendar, then add verified national authority procedures and sector-specific timelines for the jurisdictions and processing in scope.
Structured answer sets in this page tree.
Cited legal and guidance references.
Use this calendar to calculate each GDPR deadline from the event that starts it. It separates fixed dates, the for rights requests, breach awareness and the 72-hour notification assessment, DPIA and transfer review triggers, and recurring accountability work. Each row should identify the responsible actor and evidence and label any internal service level separately. National procedures and sector rules may add further steps.
The GDPR was adopted in 2016 and applies from 25 May 2018. Use 25 May 2018 as the baseline applicability date for EU GDPR calendar records and avoid treating adoption, publication, or corrigendum dates as separate operational compliance deadlines unless a specific cited task depends on them.
Directive 95/46/EC was repealed with effect from the same 25 May 2018 date. For legacy privacy program records, keep that as a migration context date rather than a recurring deadline.
The two clocks most likely to need operational routing are the data subject request clock and the personal data breach clock. Start each from its documented legal trigger, not from the next privacy meeting.
For requests under Articles 15 to 22, the controller must provide information on action taken without undue delay and in any event within one month of receipt. The EDPB explains that the period starts on the receipt date and ends on the corresponding date in the next month; if there is no corresponding date, it ends on that month's last day. If the last day is a weekend or public holiday, the deadline moves to the next working day.
The controller may extend the response period by two further months where necessary, taking account of the complexity and number of requests. It must tell the data subject about the extension and reasons within the first month. If it does not act, Article 12(4) requires the reasons and complaint and judicial-remedy information without delay and at the latest within one month.
For a personal data breach, the controller must notify the competent supervisory authority without undue delay and, where feasible, no later than 72 hours after becoming aware, unless the breach is unlikely to result in a risk to individuals' rights and freedoms. A short initial investigation may establish with reasonable certainty whether a breach occurred, but it should start promptly. If notification is late, the controller must give reasons; Article 33(4) permits information to be supplied in phases without undue further delay when it cannot be supplied at once.
No. Calculate it by calendar month from the receipt date. A request received on 31 August is due by 30 September because September has no corresponding 31st. If the calculated last day is a weekend or public holiday, the EDPB says the controller has until the next working day.
Receipt starts the period. EDPB Guidelines 01/2022 say time may be suspended until the controller obtains the information needed when it has reasonable doubts about identity and asks for necessary additional information without undue delay. The request must be proportionate. Record the original receipt, the prompt identity request, the suspension interval, the response, and the recalculated endpoint rather than treating the later reply as a new request.
No weekend pause appears in Article 33. Treat the period as 72 consecutive hours from awareness and route incidents outside business hours. If all required information is not available, notify in phases without undue further delay where Article 33(4) applies; if notification is late, give reasons.
No. Authority notification is not required when the breach is unlikely to result in a risk to individuals' rights and freedoms. The controller must still document the breach, its effects, and the remedial action under Article 33(5). Communication to affected people has the higher Article 34 threshold of likely high risk, subject to the listed exceptions.
Use worked cases to test the calendar logic before an urgent request or incident arrives. Save the receipt or awareness timestamp, the rule applied, the calculated legal endpoint, any adjustment or extension, the internal target, and the person who checked the calculation.
These examples illustrate the EU-level rules cited on this page. Confirm the public-holiday calendar, competent authority procedure, time zone, and any national procedural rule that applies to the real case.
Schedule the DPIA before processing starts when the planned type of processing is likely to result in a high risk to individuals. The calendar trigger should be a project, product, supplier, architecture, data-category, or scope change that may create high-risk processing, not a fixed annual date.
If a DPIA shows that residual high risk remains after the planned mitigation, consult the supervisory authority before processing. Where the authority considers that the intended processing would infringe the GDPR, it must provide written advice within up to eight weeks from receipt of the consultation request. That period may be extended by six weeks for complex processing and suspended while requested information is outstanding.
After implementation, review the DPIA where necessary at least when the risk represented by processing operations changes. Treat major design changes, new data categories, expanded monitoring, changed sharing, or changed safeguards as calendar reopen triggers.
Do not put a generic annual SCC deadline in the GDPR calendar unless the organisation has adopted that cadence internally. The legal workflow is event-driven: before concluding SCC-based transfers, assess the specific transfer, destination-country laws and practices, and safeguards, then monitor developments that could affect the assessment.
The European Commission Q&A explains that the SCCs require a transfer impact assessment before concluding the SCCs and that the exporter must suspend the transfer if appropriate safeguards cannot be ensured. The EDPB supplementary-measures roadmap adds an ongoing re-evaluation obligation at appropriate intervals and continuous vigilance for developments affecting protection.
Calendar transfer reviews should therefore be tied to new transfer tools or importers, changed destinations or processing chains, government-access developments, importer notices that it cannot comply, adequacy-decision changes, or material changes to supplementary safeguards. An internal periodic review date can support this monitoring, but it should be labelled as an internal control rather than a universal GDPR deadline.
The GDPR does not give one universal retention period for all personal data. Attach calendar retention work to purposes, legal bases, data categories, systems, contracts, applicable statutory retention needs, and deletion or anonymisation controls.
Use the storage limitation principle as the calendar anchor: personal data must not be kept in identifiable form for longer than necessary for the processing purposes, subject to the GDPR's longer-storage conditions for archiving in the public interest, research, or statistical purposes with safeguards.
Article 24 also requires controllers to implement measures to ensure and demonstrate GDPR compliance and to review and update those measures where necessary. That supports recurring operational reviews, but it does not create a single fixed EU-wide date for every organization.
Add national-authority timelines and sector procedures only after checking the rule for the relevant jurisdiction and processing context. For cross-border processing, confirm whether the lead supervisory authority or another competent authority is the correct route before an incident.
Internal teams can adopt shorter service levels and periodic reviews, but label them as internal controls rather than GDPR deadlines.
No single annual date applies to every GDPR control. Article 24 requires measures to be reviewed and updated where necessary, Article 35 links DPIA review to changed processing risk, and transfer guidance calls for re-evaluation at appropriate intervals and when developments affect protection. An annual review can be an internal control, but the calendar must also capture event-driven triggers.
No. Keep both. An internal target creates working time for review and escalation; the cited legal deadline remains the compliance endpoint. If the internal target is missed, escalate while the legal clock continues.
Record the source timestamp and time zone, the calculation time zone, and the authority or data-subject context used. The GDPR provisions cited here do not create a universal operational time-zone convention, so the organisation should adopt a consistent rule and confirm any national procedural requirement for the real filing.
Sorena AI assembled this calendar from the GDPR, EDPB guidance on access requests and personal data breach notification, official EDPB breach-routing information, Irish Data Protection Commission DPIA guidance, and Commission and EDPB transfer materials. Each included date, clock, extension, suspension, review trigger, and source limit was mapped to those materials.
AI assisted with source comparison, drafting, and organisation. No named human privacy or legal reviewer is claimed. Before using a row in a live matter, confirm the competent authority, applicable Member State procedure and public holidays, sector-specific law, contract terms, time zone, and the current version of the cited official source.
Source review current as of 25 July 2026. This revision added a featured one-month-period definition, inline explanations of the other timing terms, worked deadline calculations, routing cases, calendar-row controls, direct answers to common timing questions, and an explicit review-method qualification. The page date reflects those substantive changes.
Sorena can help convert these cited GDPR clocks into request queues, incident runbooks, DPIA gates, transfer reviews, and retention checks with owner and evidence fields.
Ask questions tied to cited sources about GDPR deadlines, breach notification, DSAR timing, DPIAs, transfers, and retention using the cited sources on this page.
Review your GDPR calendar, source gaps, and operational evidence model with Sorena.
"without undue delay"
"reasonable degree of certainty"
"re-evaluate at appropriate intervals"
"prior to concluding the SCCs"
"Standard Contractual Clauses"
"as early as practicable"
"binding in its entirety"