The Future of Sanctions: 5 Trends That Will Shape 2025–2030

Sanctions are becoming more central, complex, and far-reaching between 2025 and 2030, with governments issuing more designations across multiple regimes and thematic programs, tightening enforcement through secondary sanctions and evasion crackdowns, and increasingly using technology, data, and AI to track illicit activity. Energy policy, climate goals, and strategic supply chains are now core sanctions targets, while geopolitical fragmentation creates conflicting expectations across jurisdictions. 

As humanitarian concerns grow alongside coordinated US-EU-UK actions, organizations must adopt continuous multi-regime monitoring, integrate sanctions controls with KYC and trade risk, leverage AI-driven tools, and apply nuanced, risk-based approaches to navigate expanding regulatory pressure and global complexity.

Where We Are Today: The Scale of Global Sanctions

Sanctions are no longer a niche policy tool. They are now a primary instrument of foreign policy for the US, EU, UK and many allies.

Data from the Global Sanctions Data Base shows more than 1,500 distinct sanctions cases worldwide between 1950 and 2023, with 223 new cases added in the most recent update alone. Recent years have seen an unprecedented spike in activity: Russia, for example, is now the most sanctioned country in the world, with over 24,000 sanctions entries, far more than Iran, Syria or North Korea.(Source: Statbase)

Russia continues to dominate new designations, with nearly four times as many new sanctions designations as the rest of the top ten countries combined.

The EU alone has adopted 19 sanctions packages against Russia since February 2022, including sectoral measures on energy, finance, transport, technology and more; the most recent 19th package in October 2025 introduced a phased ban on Russian LNG transshipments and new measures on banks and crypto exchanges.

Against this backdrop, organizations need to understand not only current rules but the sanctions trends that will shape the rest of the decade.

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Sanctions Trend #1: More Designations, More Regimes, More Complexity

The first clear trend is volume and complexity. The number of sanctioned parties and regimes continues to rise, and the mix of justifications is broadening.

• Russia remains the epicentre, with coordinated US, EU, UK, Canadian and allied measures covering individuals, banks, state-owned enterprises, energy exports, shipping fleets, and military technology supply chains.
  
  
• Other hotspots include Iran, North Korea, Syria, Myanmar and Venezuela, all of which have thousands of active sanctions entries.
  
  
• Thematic programs, especially terrorism, human rights, cyber activity and corruption, are gaining relative importance.
  
  

The practical effect is that compliance teams now have to monitor:

• multiple overlapping regimes (US, EU, UK, UN, local lists)
• thematic programs that cut across geographies
• fast-moving geopolitical crises that trigger new packages or sector bans
  
  

From 2025 to 2030, it is reasonable to expect:

• continued large-scale sanctions against Russia as long as the war in Ukraine continues
• expanded use of sanctions in response to cyber operations, disinformation campaigns and foreign interference
• more frequent use of thematic human-rights and corruption designations targeting individuals and networks rather than only states
  
  

For businesses, these sanctions trends mean more list updates, more nuanced risk assessments, and a growing need for centralized, multi-regime screening rather than siloed local solutions.

Sanctions Trend #2: Enforcement, Secondary Sanctions and Evasion Crackdowns

The second major sanctions trend is a shift from simply announcing measures to enforcing them more aggressively, including through secondary sanctions and evasion crackdowns.

Recent enforcement analysis shows:

• OFAC continues to bring a steady stream of enforcement actions each year, across sectors as diverse as banking, crypto, insurance, technology and logistics.
  
  
• Law firms’ year-in-review reports highlight a strong focus on sanctions evasion, weak controls, and failures to detect indirect exposure through subsidiaries or intermediaries.

Regulators and policymakers have made clear that closing evasion loopholes is now a priority. 

Between 2025 and 2030, we can expect:

• more secondary sanctions risk for banks, insurers, traders and fintechs dealing with high-risk intermediaries or transshipment hubs
• increased attention on professional facilitators such as logistics firms, MSPs, corporate service providers and smaller financial institutions
• greater emphasis on controls that detect indirect links (ownership, control, supply-chain or payment corridors) rather than simple name hits

For compliance teams, this means sanctions screening needs to be tightly linked to KYC, beneficial ownership analysis and trade-based risk monitoring, not treated as a standalone widget.

Sanctions Trend #3: Technology, Data and AI as Core Compliance Infrastructure

A third defining sanctions trend is the central role of technology, data and AI in both enforcement and compliance.

On the enforcement side:

• Authorities rely on maritime analytics, satellite data, and AIS-tracking to identify shadow fleets and illicit ship-to-ship transfers, and have already sanctioned hundreds of vessels transporting Russian oil outside the price-cap regime.
  
  
• Cyber and blockchain analytics are now essential for tracking hacks and laundering by sanctioned actors; North Korean state-linked hackers allegedly stole around 1.5 billion USD in crypto from a major exchange in 2025, underlining the scale of cyber-enabled sanctions evasion.
  
  

On the compliance side, multiple industry analyses stress:

• the need for smart screening that uses AI and advanced matching to reduce false positives and capture complex name variants
• integrated platforms that combine sanctions screening, transaction monitoring, adverse media and beneficial-ownership data into one risk view
• real-time alerting on list updates and emerging evasion typologies

From 2025–2030, expect:

• AI-assisted screening and case management to move from “innovative” to expected, particularly in high-risk sectors
  
  
• greater regulatory focus on model governance and explainability for AI used in sanctions controls
  
  
• more automation around maritime risk (vessel screening, voyage history, port call analysis) and crypto risk (wallet clustering, mixer detection, DeFi analytics)
  
  

For organizations, sanctions trends in tech are clear: manual, checklist-based screening is no longer sufficient at scale. Investment in data, AI and automation will be a core compliance requirement rather than a “nice to have.”

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Sanctions Trend #4: Energy, Climate and Supply-Chain Targeting

Sanctions are also becoming more tightly linked to energy policy, climate objectives and supply-chain resilience.

The Russia sanctions regime is the clearest example:

• The EU and UK have imposed oil price caps, bans on seaborne crude, restrictions on refined products, and, most recently, a phased ban on Russian LNG transshipments via EU ports.
  
  
• Italy alone has frozen over 2.6 billion USD equivalent in Russian oligarch assets, from yachts and villas to bank accounts, showing the scale of asset-level enforcement.
  
  

Beyond Russia, sanctions are increasingly used to:

• pressure regimes involved in environmentally harmful extractive activity or illegal resource exploitation
  
  
• target suppliers of critical components (e.g., drone parts, advanced chips, precision tools) used in conflict zones
  
  
• influence strategic supply chains in areas like rare earths, critical minerals and advanced technology exports
  
  

Over 2025–2030, sanctions trends are likely to include:

• continued use of sanctions to shape energy transitions, such as price caps, shipping restrictions and technology bans that limit fossil-fuel revenues for targeted regimes
  
  
• more supply-chain sanctions that target specific nodes in high-risk value chains, especially in defence, dual-use technology and critical infrastructure
  
  
• pressure on entities that help sanctioned states reroute trade through “friendly” jurisdictions
  
  

For businesses, this means that sanctions risk will increasingly intersect with trade compliance, ESG, and supply-chain strategy. Procurement, logistics and sustainability teams will need to work closely with compliance to map exposure.

Sanctions Trend #5: Fragmentation, Coordination and the Humanitarian Balance

The final key sanctions trend is the tension between greater coordination among allies and growing geopolitical fragmentation, along with a stronger focus on humanitarian impact.

On one hand:

• G7, EU and UK sanctions on Russia, Iran and others are highly coordinated, with joint statements, shared objectives and similar designation targets.
  
  
• Industry and legal reports stress that coordinated enforcement across sanctions and export controls is “here to stay,” as agencies align more closely on priorities, especially around technology and national security.
  
  

On the other hand:

• some countries deepen ties with sanctioned regimes, offering alternative trade and financial channels
• this creates a more fragmented landscape, where businesses face conflicting expectations depending on jurisdiction
• secondary sanctions elevate the risk for companies in neutral or “in-between” markets that trade with both sanctions-issuing and targeted states
  
  

At the same time, there is rising attention to humanitarian carve-outs and over-compliance:

• UN and NGO critiques highlight the risk that broad financial restrictions can unintentionally damage civilian access to food, medicine and basic services in heavily sanctioned countries
• regulators are issuing more guidance on humanitarian exceptions and urging banks to avoid blanket de-risking that cuts entire regions off from the financial system

Between now and 2030, expect:

• further alignment among US, EU, UK and key allies on large “headline” programs, especially around Russia, Iran and high-tech exports
  
  
• more friction between those coalitions and countries that seek a non-aligned or alternative financial order
  
  
• continued debate on balancing sanctions pressure with humanitarian protections and financial inclusion
  
  

For compliance teams, this translates into a need for granular, risk-based approaches rather than binary “in/out” decisions. Understanding exactly what is prohibited, what is carved out, and what is high-risk but permissible will be essential.

What These Sanctions Trends Mean for Compliance Teams

Across all five trends, several practical themes emerge for 2025–2030:

1. Sanctions volumes will stay high and regimes will remain politically central, so list monitoring must be continuous and multi-jurisdictional.
2. Evasion and secondary sanctions risk will grow, especially in trade, shipping, fintech and crypto, which means more focus on ownership, networks and trade flows.
3. Technology and AI will be indispensable for effective sanctions screening, transaction monitoring and maritime/crypto risk analytics.
4. Energy and supply-chain targeting will expand, tying sanctions to ESG, climate and strategic-trade discussions.
5. Fragmentation and coordination will coexist, requiring nuanced, jurisdiction-aware compliance strategies and strong legal counsel.
   
   

Organizations that invest early in robust sanctions programs, high-quality data, and automated, explainable monitoring tools will be far better positioned to navigate this environment than those relying on manual processes and outdated systems.

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