As organisations move into their 2026 sustainability planning, a quiet shift is catching many by surprise.
A large number of B Corp certified organisations are still operating with the legacy B Impact Assessment mindset, while realising that from 1 January 2026, any company certifying or re-certifying under the B Corp Standards must meet a far clearer and more explicit materiality assessment requirement.
For Large, X-Large and XX-Large companies, materiality is now mandatory.
For many Medium companies, it is becoming unavoidable in practice, particularly where environmental impact assessments or human rights due diligence are involved.
This article clarifies what the 2025 updated B Corp Standards require when it comes to materiality, and shares how our thinking on B Corp materiality has evolved through recent, hands-on delivery work.
From points to priorities
The most significant change in the B Corp Standards is not a new disclosure requirement or an extra procedural step. It is a shift in intent.
The legacy B Impact Assessment was designed as a performance measurement tool. It reflected B Lab’s view of good practice and rewarded companies for having the right policies and initiatives in place across a predefined set of impact areas. It was valuable for benchmarking and certification, but it was never a materiality assessment in the way frameworks such as GRI or ESRS define one.
Under the updated Standards, materiality becomes explicit. Large companies are expected to identify their most significant social and environmental impacts, engage stakeholders to inform that assessment, prioritise issues based on significance, and disclose both the methodology and the outcomes.
The focus has moved from documenting activities to demonstrating judgement.
Who actually needs to do a materiality assessment
On paper, the scope is clear. Large, X-Large and XX-Large companies must conduct a regular materiality assessment. Medium companies are not always formally required to do so.
In practice, however, many Medium companies still need to identify salient human rights issues or understand their environmental impacts across the value chain. As soon as they start doing this properly, they are already most of the way toward a structured materiality assessment. Increasingly, these organisations choose to take a slightly broader approach, sometimes extending into risks and opportunities, because it supports strategy, governance, and future readiness.
The important point is the materiality assessment does not need to be over-engineered. But it does need to be defensible.
What B Corp requires, and what it leaves open
One source of confusion is the assumption that B Corp prescribes a single, rigid methodology for materiality. It does not.
The Standards define outcomes, not mechanics. They require that the assessment:
- Is grounded in the company’s value chain
- Engages relevant stakeholder groups
- Identifies actual and potential impacts
- Applies clear criteria to determine significance
- Is overseen by governance and explained publicly
How companies achieve those outcomes is deliberately left open. That flexibility is helpful, but it also creates risk if the process lacks structure or clarity.
Why the value chain matters more than ever
One lesson that has become increasingly clear in practice is this.
Without a clear value chain, materiality is guesswork.
Many assessments still start with a list of sustainability topics, followed by a survey asking stakeholders to rate those topics on a numerical scale. While this approach looks efficient, it rarely leads to meaningful insight because it ignores where impacts actually arise.
A more robust starting point is mapping how the organisation creates value, where it sources from, how it operates, and what happens downstream. Once that picture is clear, it becomes much easier to understand which sustainability issues translate into real impacts, and where those impacts are most likely to occur.
Topics are not impacts
This is one of the most common and most important pitfalls:
Topics are not impacts
Topics such as pollution, climate, or human rights are useful organising categories, but they are not what B Corp is asking companies to assess. When stakeholders are asked to rate a topic in the abstract, the answers tend to be vague and inconsistent.
A stronger approach is to use topics as an entry point, then move quickly to the underlying impacts. For example, instead of asking about pollution in general, companies can identify specific impacts related to emissions, runoff, or waste in particular parts of the value chain.
Stakeholders can then be asked two much more meaningful questions:
- Do these impacts occur in practice and are they relevant to the business
- How severe and how likely are they
This shift from topics to concrete impacts significantly improves the quality of the assessment and aligns with how impact materiality is understood in the updated B Corp Standards.
How we now approach B Corp materiality in practice
Best practice materiality assessments have evolved toward being more deliberate and more front-loaded.
They begin with preparation, defining the value chain, translating broad topics into specific issues, and identifying likely impacts, risks, and opportunities before engaging stakeholders. Then, map which stakeholder groups are connected to which impacts so engagement is focused and purposeful.
Engagement then becomes a process of validation and prioritisation rather than exploration. Different stakeholder groups are engaged in different ways, depending on their relationship to the impacts being assessed.
Finally, the impacts are reviewed, refined, and assessed using clear criteria around severity and likelihood. Thresholds are set consciously, judgement is documented, and the outcomes are structured to support governance oversight and public disclosure.
What good looks like under the new Standards
A strong B Corp materiality assessment in 2026 should feel grounded in how the business actually operates. It should clearly explain why certain impacts matter more than others and how that judgement was reached.
Done well, materiality moves beyond compliance. It becomes a practical foundation for impact management, helping organisations focus their effort where it can genuinely make the biggest difference.
Getting Ready for B Corp Materiality in 2026
As companies look ahead to certification or re-certification, the most important question is not whether they can produce a matrix or a report.
It is whether they can clearly explain which impacts matter most, how they know, and what they are doing about it.
If that answer feels uncertain, now is the right time to revisit how materiality is approached under the updated B Corp Standards.
Dr. Tim Siegenbeek van Heukelom is Chief Impact Officer at Socialsuite, where he spearheads the development of ESG technology that helps organisations identify, prioritise, and report on their most material sustainability issues. With more than a decade of global sustainability experience and deep ESG expertise in strategy, programs, and reporting, Tim has worked across public, private, and non-profit sectors.
www.socialsuitehq.com
