The Update Constitutional Committee 2026 action is decided at the epoch boundary into epoch 653, (Sept 1st, 21:44 UTC). For latecomers: Votes are counted through the end of epoch 652, so nothing cast after that boundary matters for this action.
Where the committee stands today
Eight seats are registered on chain. One of them, the Cardano Atlantic Council, resigned back in epoch 597 and does not count, so seven seats are active.
| Seat | Term ends |
|---|---|
| Cardano Japan Council, KtorZ, Phil_uplc, Cardano Curia | epoch 653 |
| Ace Alliance, Tingvard, Eastern Cardano Council | epoch 726 |
| Cardano Atlantic Council | resigned in epoch 597 |
The committeeMinSize protocol parameter is currently 5.
A member counts as active while the current epoch is less than or equal to the expiration epoch. The four seats ending at 653 therefore stay valid for all of epoch 653 and lapse at the boundary into epoch 654, on September 6th, 21:44 UTC.
If the action passes
It is ratified at the boundary into epoch 653 and enacted one boundary later, at the start of epoch 654. The committee then has seven seats again: the three sitting until epoch 726, plus Marek Mahut, Phil_uplc, Leandros BSP and Cardano Curia with 146 epoch terms running to epoch 799.
The new terms begin in exactly the epoch where the old ones end, so there is no gap.
If it does not pass
From the start of epoch 654 the committee has three active members against a minimum of five.
The ledger does not scale the threshold down in that situation. Below committeeMinSize it treats the committee as if it did not exist at all, which means the committee threshold is not "harder to reach", it is absent, and the committee acceptance check returns false for every action that needs one. No level of DRep or SPO support can compensate.
Cannot be ratified while the committee is undersized
- Treasury withdrawals
- Parameter changes
- Hard fork initiation
- New constitution
Unaffected
- No confidence and update committee actions, because the committee does not vote on those at all
- Info actions, which never ratify by design
- Actions already ratified before the boundary, which still enact on schedule
- The three remaining members can still cast votes, those votes just cannot add up to a ratification
Two treasury withdrawals are live right now with an expiry of epoch 656, the Ikigai deposit reimbursement and the Governance Incentives Framework 2026. Their last usable ratification boundary would be the one into epoch 653. After that they can only run out the clock.
The parameter trap
committeeMinSize is itself a protocol parameter, and changing it is a parameter change action, which is one of the four types that need committee approval. The minimum cannot be lowered to escape the situation it created.
That leaves two paths:
- A new update committee action. It needs 67 percent of DRep voting stake and 51 percent of SPO stake. Because three members sit until epoch 726, it only has to add two seats to restore the minimum.
- A no confidence action first, which empties the committee entirely but lowers the DRep threshold for the following election from 67 to 60 percent.
Either way that is a fresh action with its own voting window, one boundary to ratify and another to enact, so realistically several epochs before a committee is seated again.
How to check this yourself
- Committee state, including the resigned seat and every expiration epoch: Koios
/committee_info - The current minimum: Koios
/epoch_params, fieldcommittee_min_size - The rule itself:
votingCommitteeThresholdInternalinCardano/Ledger/Conway/Governance/Internal.hsandcommitteeAcceptedinCardano/Ledger/Conway/Rules/Ratify.hsin cardano-ledger
The live tallies for the action are on its thread. Corrections welcome, everything above is reproducible from the two Koios endpoints.