ESCO v1.2.1

In December 2025 the Commission has published a new minor version of the European classification of Skills, Competences, Occupations, and Qualifications (ESCO 1.2.1).

ESCO v1.2.1 reflects adjustments to translations across languages as well as content-related updates aimed at improving the quality and consistency of concepts. This minor update was developed through a data-driven quality review of the database and feedback on translations provided by Member States.

Minor updates of ESCO primarily introduce quality improvements to the taxonomy structure and relationships between different concepts, without adding or removing content from the database.

What has changed?

Key improvements in ESCO v1.2.1 include:

Updated translations: Review of different language packages based on feedback from Member States authorities. This ensures better multilingual usability of ESCO.
Removal of duplicates: Repetitions between preferred and alternate labels were removed across all 28 official ESCO languages.
Quality review of occupations: Links between occupations and skills were revised where excessive numbers of skills were associated with a single occupation. The overall consistency of the classification structure was improved.
Revision of green skill–occupation relationships: Updates to ESCO green labels and links between green skills and occupations..
New alternative labels: Adjustments were made to non-preferred English terms and alternative terms across ESCO languages based on Member States’ feedback, addressing cases where no English alternative terms were previously identified.

Supporting documentation

The occupations, skills and competences in the updated classification are available in the ESCO portal, in the Download Section, and via API.

Additional documentation on NACE croswalk can be found in the Croswalk section.

The occupations, skills and competences in the updated classification in all ESCO languages are available in the ESCO portal, in the Download Section and via API.

To support easier implementation across different use cases and implementers, the ESCO database is now available in the following formats: CSV, JSON-LD, ODS, RDF, TTL and XML.

In the download section users can as well access the Delta File which includes the key information of the concepts that changed in this version compared to previous ESCO versions. To obtain this file insert the following filters: the version “ESCO dataset – v1.2.1”, the content “delta”, the language “Language independent”, and the file type which in the case of delta files is only “csv”.