Fewer principles, sharper outcomes
13 principles replace King IV's 17. The Code is now outcomes-based - what your board achieves, not just what it has in place.
King V is here. The Disclosure Framework is public. The evidence bar has moved. BoardEvaluator™ is the only platform purpose-built to map every King V principle to a real evaluation - and produce the proof to publish.
King V was released by the Institute of Directors in South Africa on 31 October 2025 and supersedes King IV from 1 January 2026. From that date, organisations applying the Code must do so against the new 13 principles, the new outcomes-based recommended practices, and the new public Disclosure Framework. For most boards, the next annual evaluation cycle - the one that informs the 2026 integrated report - is the first cycle under the new Code. There is no transition discount. There is only what you can evidence.
King V is not a refresh. It is a reframing. Five shifts matter for board evaluations.
13 principles replace King IV's 17. The Code is now outcomes-based - what your board achieves, not just what it has in place.
To claim application of King V, disclosures must be made publicly available against a standardised framework. Internal sign-off is no longer enough.
Sustainability disclosures must reflect both impact on the organisation and impact of the organisation - a meaningful uplift on King IV.
King V explicitly addresses the responsible adoption and oversight of AI - making AI governance a standing board competency, not a delegated IT concern.
Practices scale to the organisation, but recommended practices increasingly inform legal standards of care. "Apply or explain" has a sharper edge.
Sources: IoDSA - King V release announcement · IoDSA Foundational Concepts · Clyde & Co - King V on AI Governance
Under an outcomes-based code, an evaluation is no longer the closing chore of the year - it is the primary evidence that the board's practices have produced its required outcomes. The Disclosure Framework presumes you can show this. The 13 principles presume you have tested it.
That is a high bar for an annual board self-assessment built in a survey tool. It requires a methodology that pairs quantitative evaluation with qualitative inquiry, maps directly to King V's principle architecture, and produces evidence that can be published - not just filed.
The most concrete way to evidence King V application is to show, principle by principle, how you tested for it. Below is the mapping that lives natively inside BoardEvaluator™.
The King V Disclosure Framework is the publicly accessible record of how an organisation applies the Code. It is not a checklist - it is an evidentiary instrument. The boards that handle it best in 2026 will be the ones whose evaluation process produces disclosure-grade outputs by design, not as an afterthought.
BoardEvaluator™ generates structured disclosure outputs for each King V principle as the evaluation runs - quantitative scores, qualitative themes from director interviews, recommended-practice coverage, outcome statements, and action roadmaps. Your Company Secretary publishes; they don't reconstruct.
Scored coverage across all 13 King V principles, benchmarked against past cycles and sector peers.
Themed insight from confidential director interviews and peer evaluation, surfacing dynamics no questionnaire reveals.
Per-principle outcome statements and evidence summaries, ready for inclusion in your King V Disclosure Framework.
See: IoDSA - King V Monitoring and Enforcement Guidance · Reference disclosure: JSE Ltd - King V Disclosure Framework 2025
King V explicitly endorses the double materiality approach to sustainability disclosure: organisations must report both how sustainability matters affect the business and how the business's activities affect society and the environment.
The Celagenix ESGOR™ framework - Environmental, Social, Governance, Organisational health, Resilience - was designed for this dual lens. The Sustainability & ESG Status Assessment module in BoardEvaluator™ applies ESGOR™ to your board's oversight of sustainability, producing evidence that satisfies both directions of materiality.
King V brings AI governance squarely into the boardroom. Boards are expected to oversee the responsible adoption, ethical deployment, and risk management of artificial intelligence within their organisations - a competency King IV did not require directors to evidence.
BoardEvaluator™ includes a native AI Governance Status Assessment module. It surfaces whether your board has the right composition, policy architecture, risk appetite and oversight cadence to govern AI under King V's expectations - and produces the disclosure-ready output to evidence it.
Explore the AI Governance moduleMany boards are part-way through a King IV evaluation cycle when King V takes effect. The Code accommodates this; the question is how to move forward without losing continuity.
Complete your current King IV cycle on platform, then upgrade the questionnaire set and disclosure outputs to King V for the next cycle.
Run a single combined cycle that satisfies King IV close-out and King V opening evidence simultaneously.
Initiate the 2026 cycle directly under King V with a baseline assessment, ideal for boards whose last evaluation is more than 18 months old.
Boards that treat King V as the floor - not the ceiling - use the evaluation to surface the things the principles can never capture: chairing dynamics, decision velocity, the quality of dissent, the courage of strategic conversation. BoardEvaluator™ was built around that distinction. The result is measurable.
Align the cycle to your King V application context, sector and board structure.
Modules, question banks and committee scopes are set; boards and members onboarded.
Confidential quantitative evaluations on desktop or mobile, with autosave and reminders.
Celagenix governance advisors conduct confidential qualitative interviews.
Analysis, recommendations and per-principle disclosure outputs delivered.
Operational in 17 countries. Used by more than 100 organisations across listed entities, state-owned enterprises, pension funds, financial services, mining, agriculture, retail, and health.
Pension fund boards carry distinct evaluation obligations under FSCA expectations, the Pension Funds Act, and increasingly the King V Code. BoardEvaluator™ includes pension-fund-specific modules - Principal Officer Evaluation and Fund Administrator Evaluation - that run alongside the standard board and director evaluations.
BoardEvaluator™ is the product expression of more than a decade of governance practice. Celagenix® is a specialist sustainability and corporate governance consultancy with offices in Sandton, Gaborone and shortly Windhoek, serving boards in 17 countries through a partnership of senior governance practitioners. The platform exists because our advisors built the tool they wanted to use themselves.
A 30-minute King V Readiness Call with a Celagenix governance advisor will tell you exactly where your current evaluation methodology falls short of the new Code - and what it would take to be ready.
BoardEvaluator™ is a registered product of Celagenix® Holdings (Pty) Ltd. Operational in 17 countries. Securely hosted on AWS. King V™ is a trademark of the Institute of Directors in South Africa.