Earn through licensing your work

DACS streamlines the set-up of licensing agreements, and represents over 90,000 artists. We're often a picture editor’s first thought when they need artistic copyright clearance.

Are you eligible?

• Do you own the copyright in your artworks?
• Can you confirm that you haven't granted any exclusive rights to use your work to anyone else?
• Do you receive regular requests for your work to be reproduced?

DACS Licensing service is for visual art copyright holders who do not already have copyright licensing representation from an agent, gallery or image library.

It’s separate from DACS ARR and DACS Payback. You may already receive royalty payments from us through those services. That does not mean that we manage your copyright. Check which DACS services you’re a member of by emailing: membership@dacs.org.uk

Licensing vs assigning copyright

Licensing means you are paid for use of your work and remain in control of its usage. Assigning copyright to someone else means you give them full control of its usage. You lose your author rights and you will not receive any royalty payments for print, digital or broadcasting usage of the work.

As an artist or creator working for someone else, this can make a big difference to what you will get for what you create.

Our quality criteria for licensing

You can be assured that for any uses of your work:

• colour is reproduced as faithfully as possible
• it is not manipulated or subjected to any derogatory treatment
• cites the title of your work accurately
• credits you as the artist of the work

Join DACS Licensing

Register your interest in our licensing service for artists and beneficiaries, and be connected with people looking for quality works to reproduce.

Join DACS Images

If you're looking to license your work for commercial use, DACS Images offers a trusted and professional platform to help you do just that.  

We can manage the supply of your images, ensuring your work is represented and licensed appropriately. 

Are you eligible to join DACS Images?

• Are you a DACS Licensing member or willing to join?
• Do you own the copyright in your work and the image files, have no exclusive agreements elsewhere, and receive regular requests to reproduce your work?
• Are you open to commercial licensing for print, digital, and merchandising?
• Can you provide a licensing history, showing past commercial demand and uses of your work?
• Do you have high-resolution image files, and can your artwork be scaled and formatted without loss of quality? 

How licensing works

1. When you join DACS Licensing, and optionally DACS Images, you sign a membership agreement that clearly explains how we’ll manage the licensing of your work.
2. Clients use our online licensing request form to get in touch with us about licensing your work. If requests come to you directly, these can be sent onto our Licensing Team to take forward for you.
3. We negotiate the terms of the request and agree a royalty fee, based on the reach and commerciality of the use.
4. Once approved, we arrange a licence with the client, clearly agreeing the terms of the use, and if applicable, issue the image file.
5. We then invoice and collect the royalty fee due to you.

We pay out licensing royalties four times a year and you’ll receive a statement each time we pay you.

Our fees

Joining DACS Licensing and DACS Images is free As we’re not-for-profit, we retain a percentage of the royalties we collect on your behalf to cover our costs.

• For DACS Licensing, we deduct 25% for royalties collected in the UK and for royalties collected from overseas we deduct 15%.
• For DACS Images, we deduct 35% of the royalties collected for UK and overseas.

More information

What is licensing?
What to charge for copyright licensing
Introduction to visual arts copyright
What's possible with image licensing?
Thinking ahead about your wishes: estate planning for artists