UK bans specific porn categories with up to five-year prison terms

By Sophie Lindqvist

Publishing material within any of the three newly banned categories can carry a maximum five-year prison sentence in the UK, according to official guidance for the Crime and Policing Act 2026. The same guidance sets a maximum two-year sentence for possessing strangulation or suffocation content and incest material, and three years for content involving someone under 16 or perceived to be under 16.

What does the law prohibit?

The measures apply across the UK and cover three defined areas:

• Strangulation or suffocation.
• Penetration of people “who a reasonable person would think are related, or pretending to be related, in a certain way.”
• Sexual activity between two or more people “where a reasonable person would think at least one person is, or is pretending to be, under 16.”

The thresholds use a reasonable-person test for relationships and age. All three bans form part of the Crime and Policing Act.

What must platforms do?

The government says the new offenses will be listed as priority offenses under the Online Safety Act, the country’s age-verification law, which took effect in July 2025. Platforms must establish systems and processes that prevent UK users from seeing the specified content. The guidance frames the duty around UK users, while the documented platform response also limits its adjustment to UK access.

In an Oct. 28 press release, iWantClips told creators it would remove 17 categories from UK access. The announcement supplied 13 examples from that larger set:

• Choking Fantasy Play
• Breath Play Fantasy
• Hand Over Mouth
• Face Sitting
• Jeans Face Sitting
• BBW (Big Beautiful Woman) Facesitting
• Chest Sitting
• Ass Smothering
• Foot Smothering
• Breast Smothering
• Scissor Hold
• Trampling Fantasy
• Plastic Fetish

The practical reach effect is a smaller catalog for UK users, while access in other markets remains outside the announcement. The platform did not provide figures for lost views, traffic or revenue.

How are creators responding?

In September, filmmaker and performer Vex Ashley censored two films in anticipation of the bans: Maman and Maman II. The “mommy kink” features heavily in both videos. She told Mashable: “We basically had to go back and dub it out in a very retro-censorship kind of way.”

For creator budgets, the immediate burden is re-editing labor. No production cost, re-editing cost or staffing figure was disclosed for either film. The documented effects so far are two edited films and one platform’s UK catalog adjustment. No industry-wide revenue loss was reported.

Ashley also warned about the wider policy direction in a press release. “The criminalising of our fantasies and imaginations feels like another step along the conveyor belt of puritanism to conservatism to fascism that no one feels prepared to fight.” Adult-industry workers and free-speech experts have sounded similar alarms for years, stating that such regulations would expand. The UK is also planning a broad social-media ban for children under 16.

Why does age verification matter now?

Age-verification laws have also been enacted in half of the United States, as well as in France, Italy and other regions. They typically require proof of age, such as government ID or a facial scan, for explicit content and sometimes non-explicit material restricted to adults.

For platforms and publishers, verification determines audience access rather than merely confirming a user’s age. For creators, it can make catalog distribution depend on location and compliance settings. The next phase will test priority-offense detection, catalog filtering and age checks, because the stated enforcement goal is preventing UK users from seeing the newly prohibited material.