ACTION REQUIRED: TRACE Transition to Native FIX – Cutover December 11, 2026

As previously announced, FINRA is transitioning from its legacy FIX platform to a new Native FIX platform for TRACE trade reporting.

The final cutover date to transition TRACE production ports to Native FIX is December 11, 2026. FINRA strongly recommends that firms and Service Bureaus begin the transition as soon as possible as connections require Nasdaq and internal provisioning. There are limited remaining Saturday test dates for production port validation prior to cutover and subsequent decommissioning of legacy FIX ports.

Key Information:

• Firms and Service Bureaus must order Native FIX ports via the FINRA Native FIX Port Request Form available on NasdaqTrader.com or the Nasdaq Customer Portal. Please provide all Source IPs in the Special Instructions section to expedite provisioning.
• FINRA strongly encourages Native FIX testing in NTF followed by participation in a Saturday production test to confirm connectivity, trade reporting, and message handling in the new platform before going live.
• After cutover, firms should submit removal requests of their legacy production FIX ports (using the current legacy Port Request Form) to avoid maintaining both platforms simultaneously.
• The new real-time Match confirmation messages (detailed in the December 22, 2025, Technical Notice) are only available in Native FIX. Provisioning requires indication of "Trade Match" in the Drop Copy Settings section of the Port Request Form.
• Native FIX ports will operate in hot-hot mode. Nasdaq will provide primary, secondary, and DR IP addresses. Clients are responsible for monitoring their connections, detecting connection failures, and failing over to the secondary (or DR) connection to re-establish connectivity.

Important - The Native FIX platform enforces MsgSeqNum reset. Firms must set MsgSeqNum to 1 on the initial logon attempt at the start of each trading day.

Required changes can be found in the TRACE Native FIX Specs. Step-by-step instructions, questions regarding NTF fees, and additional details regarding the TRACE transition to Native FIX can be found in the prior October 15, 2025, December 22, 2025, January 30, 2026, March 6, 2026, and June 29, 2026, Technical Notices.

Please contact FINRA Client & System Management with questions regarding this notice.