Russia Federal Law No. 116-FZ — localisation-score mandate for passenger-taxi vehicles

Mechanism

Federal Law No. 116-FZ inserts a domestic-content gate into Russia's taxi-licensing statute (Federal Law No. 580-FZ of 2022). From 1 March 2026, a vehicle can only be added to a regional taxi registry if it either scores above a government-set localisation-points threshold — the same scoring mechanism (Government Resolution No. 719) used to gate public-procurement eligibility, reported at a 3,200-point floor today, rising to 3,500 points in 2027 and 3,700 in 2028 — or was built under a special investment contract (SPIC) signed between 1 March 2022 and 1 March 2025. Points accrue for parts and production stages completed on Russian soil, which in practice restricts the compliant fleet to Lada, Moskvich, UAZ, Sollers and Voyah models; Minpromtorg published the first approved-vehicle list in October 2025. Vehicles already in a regional registry before the effective date keep their status (grandfathering), with a longer transition window (to 1 March 2028) carved out for Kaliningrad and the Siberian Federal District, reflecting their heavier reliance on imported/parallel-imported stock. A December 2025 follow-on amendment further softened the mandate for self-employed drivers, letting them run non-localised vehicles until 2033 provided such cars stay under 25% of a region's registry.

Severity is set at 3 (mixed basis): this is a binding, dated market- access gate for an entire vehicle-fleet segment (all new taxi registrations nationwide from 1 March 2026), with a quantified compliance threshold (points system) and quantified sunset dates — but its economic bite is softened by broad grandfathering and a self-employed-driver carve-out, and it targets a domestic-use fleet segment rather than cross-border trade directly, so it stops short of a hard import ban.

Downstream implications

• Foreign-brand and CKD-assembled vehicles that cannot clear the

localisation-points floor are progressively excluded from Russia's taxi fleet, reinforcing Lada/Moskvich/UAZ/Sollers/Voyah as the default choices for taxi operators renewing their fleets after 1 March 2026.

• Aggregator platforms (Yandex Taxi et al.) and fleet operators face a

multi-year replacement-cycle cost as pre-2026 non-compliant vehicles age out of the grandfathering window.

• Watch Minpromtorg's approved-vehicle list for additions (it opened

with a narrow OEM set in October 2025) and the 2027/2028 point- threshold step-ups for signs of further tightening or relief.

Open questions

• Full primary text of the December 2025 self-employed-driver carve-out

amendment was not independently retrieved; the 25%-cap figure is taken from secondary Russian legal-press reporting and should be confirmed against its own pravo.gov.ru publication if it is filed as a separate action.

• Exact wording of the localisation-points formula (which line items

count, how points are audited) sits in Government Resolution No. 719 rather than in 116-FZ itself; not independently verified here.