What changed in April 2025
B Lab, the nonprofit that owns and runs B Corp certification, published new certification standards on 8 April 2025 and closed the previous route, under which a cumulative 80 points across the B Impact Assessment was enough to certify. Every submission now runs on the new standards instead: Foundation Requirements that apply to every company, plus performance requirements across seven Impact Topics. B Lab verifies the result in an audit-style review rather than only checking a total score.
The seven Impact Topics
The new standards organise requirements into seven Impact Topics: Purpose and Stakeholder Governance, Climate Action, Human Rights, Fair Work, Environmental Stewardship and Circularity, Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, and Government Affairs and Collective Action. Depending on a company’s size, sector and risk profile, roughly 20 to 124 sub-requirements apply across these topics, and each one needs to be evidenced rather than simply asserted. Some requirements sit within Foundation Requirements that every applicant must meet regardless of sector, and the rest are the performance requirements that vary by size and risk profile, so two companies of different sizes can face a noticeably different list.
Who this applies to, and on what timeline
B Lab’s own eligibility floor is straightforward: any for-profit company that has been operating for at least twelve months can apply. Two groups sit on either side of the new standards. Companies certifying for the first time can now submit under the new standards in Europe, where that route opened on 11 March 2026. Companies that are already B Corps face recertification on a bar stricter than the one they originally passed; B Lab gave companies due to recertify in 2026 a twelve-month extension when the transition was announced, in recognition of how much heavier the new standards are. Recertification falls on each company’s own due date rather than a single fixed date across all B Corps. Certification under the new standards is valid for five years, with follow-up audits in between.
What preparing the assessment actually involves
Meeting the new standards means pulling together evidence that is normally scattered across an organisation: governance documents such as articles of association, HR (human resources) policies and contracts, workforce data, energy and emissions figures, supplier information, and any existing certificates or prior assessments. B Lab’s verification is an audit-style review, so what matters is not how the assessment is written but whether the underlying policy or practice genuinely exists and is followed. Where a required document, such as a code of conduct or a supplier code, does not exist yet, writing and adopting it is normally the fastest way to close that particular gap.
Timeline: B Lab’s clock, not yours
Once a company submits, B Lab’s own review and verification take over, and B Lab indicates that certification typically takes two to six months from submission. That timeline sits with B Lab and depends on its review queue and the complexity of the submission, so it is worth planning recertification, or a first certification, well ahead of any date that matters commercially, such as a tender requirement or an investor commitment. B Lab also charges its own fees for submission, annual certification and verification, set by B Lab according to company size, separately from any preparation work.
Where Humboldt fits
Humboldt prepares the B Impact Assessment from your own documents and data, builds the evidence pack behind each requirement, and lists the gaps against the certification bar with a template for any missing standard document. Our ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) expert checks and signs the work before B Lab’s review begins. More detail on the B Corp assessment.