VCA eCoC Portal: how to register for the training webinars before go-live

Why this matters now

The UK is moving from paper Certificates of Conformity to electronic ones. Under Assimilated Regulation (EU) 2018/858, manufacturers will need to make the CoC for newly manufactured vehicles available to the VCA as structured electronic data from 5 July 2026.

The VCA's new eCoC Portal goes live in the second half of June 2026 — Phase 1. The VCA has also opened registration for a short series of free training webinars covering how the Portal works.

If you submit eCoCs for M, N or O category vehicles under the GB or UKNI schemes, the practical question right now is twofold: book onto a webinar, and make sure the upstream work — generating valid, signed XML — is in hand before you get to the upload step.

The eCoC training webinars

The VCA's digital training team is running a short series of free webinars with time for live questions. All three sessions cover identical content, so attendees only need to pick one date.

What's covered

• Overview of the eCoC Portal
• How to submit eCoC data through the Portal
• Managing users and access permissions
• Key system functionality and walk-throughs

The focus is squarely on using the Portal. Submission via the system-to-system API is covered in separately published VCA guidance, not in these sessions. A recorded session will be published on the VCA website afterwards, so if none of the dates work you'll still have access to the material.

What we know about the eCoC Portal

Source: VCA — Electronic Certificates of Conformity (eCoCs) ↗

• Goes live in the second half of June 2026 (Phase 1).
• Scope: vehicles in categories M, N and O under the GB or UKNI schemes, including medium/small-series variants. No obligation for vehicles manufactured before 5 July 2026.
• Two submission routes overall: manual upload via the Portal (the focus of this post) and a system-to-system API for higher-volume manufacturers. This article is about the Portal route, but the API is the right answer if you're moving meaningful volume.
• A Phase 2 is targeted for July 2026, which will add a public VIN-search lookup against submitted eCoCs.

The harder bit: producing a valid, signed eCoC file in the first place

This is where most manufacturers will actually spend their preparation time. The VCA does not provide file-generation software — it's the manufacturer's responsibility to produce a compliant file. For the Portal to accept a submission, each eCoC has to be:

• A valid XML file built against the UK IVI (Initial Vehicle Information) XML Schema Definition (XSD). This is not something that can realistically be hand-edited at any meaningful volume — IVI is dense, deeply nested, and full of code-list values that look interchangeable but aren't.
• Populated with the correct IVI technical fields, including the UK-specific elements — for example the GB/UKNI approval codes (g11, n11 and similar) and the scheme codes (GB, UKNI).
• Digitally signed to eIDAS standards, aligned to the EU eCoC signing requirements. A file without a valid digital signature will be rejected at upload — the validator doesn't reach the schema check until the signature passes.

The Portal makes the submission step straightforward. The work that determines whether your submissions go through cleanly on day one — XML generation, IVI field accuracy, eIDAS-compliant signing — is everything that happens before the Portal. That's the part worth getting in order now.

How to access the Portal

Source: VCA — improving how users access VCA online services ↗

The VCA is introducing a single, secure customer login so manufacturers can reach multiple services — including Type Approval and the eCoC Portal — with one set of credentials.

• If you already have a VCA Type Approval Portal account, you'll be able to use it to access the eCoC Portal at launch.
• Inside the Portal, account holders can add users and manage permissions for their organisation.
• No action is needed yet. The VCA will email customers directly with instructions before the change goes live, including setting a password at first sign-in. Existing applications and account data are not affected.

In other words: the access piece is being handled for you. The piece that isn't, is the file-generation pipeline that sits behind your account.