FINRA will Retire Legacy FIX in 2026

In 2026, to improve process throughput and standardize protocol, FINRA will retire its legacy platform and require all FIX reporting and Service Bureau clients transition their ports to Native FIX for TRACE and Over-The-Counter Reporting Facility (ORF) transaction reporting. The upgraded Native FIX port will improve resiliency and provide real-time disaster recovery in case of a port, system or location outage. ¹

FINRA is providing this advance notice to allow all FIX clients and Service Bureaus to incorporate this transition in their 2026 plans. 

High Level overview of changes: 

All TRACE and ORF reporting firms and Service Bureaus that connect and report transactions to FINRA via FIX, including in both the test and production regions, will be required to transition to the Native FIX platform.

The transition for all TRACE FIX reporting firms and TRACE Service Bureaus is expected to take place in the first half of 2026, and the transition for all ORF FIX reporting firms and ORF Service Bureaus is expected to take place in the second half of 2026. 

Firms will be required to order new ports. One port will be required per MPID per product. For example, one port will be required for a specific MPID for TRACE CA, one for TRACE SP, one for TRACE TS, and one for ORF if the client or Service Bureau reports to each of these facilities.

Native FIX ports will operate in hot-hot mode.  Customers will be provided with primary, secondary, and DR IP addresses for Native FIX ports. Customers will be responsible for monitoring their connections, detecting when there is a connection failure, and failing over to the secondary (or DR) connection to re-establish connectivity.  Customers may use any standard FIX Platform to connect, monitor, alert, fail over, etc.

Free testing will be offered for 60 days to ensure a successful transition to Native FIX. All customers will be required to register for the fee waiver with [email protected] before their testing begins. 

Next Steps:

All FIX clients and Service Bureaus should consider this transition in their plans for 2026. FINRA will issue specific steps for FIX clients and Service Bureaus in a future technical notice. This will include the publication of updated FIX specifications, which will detail any required FIX tag changes and other necessary amendments for the project, and the issuance of a new Port Request Form which customers will be required to execute to begin to plan for the transition. 

Please contact FINRA Client and System Management regarding questions. 

Thank you for your attention to this matter.