PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine and analyze the impact of governance internal mechanisms on audit report lag. The characteristics of governance used in this study are selected by looking at recent literature review.Design/methodology/approachGovernance internal mechanisms were proxied by the audit committee and director's board characteristics. To test the impact of these characteristics, the authors used a sample of 47 Tunisian companies listed on the Tunis Stock Exchange (BVMT) during the period from 2014 to 2019. The generalized method of moments (GMM) method of dynamic panel multivariate analysis was used to analyze this study.FindingsThe results showed that most corporate governance attributes have a significant effect on audit report lag. Specifically, the audit committee diligence and the audit committee expertise have significant and positive effect on audit report lag. But the diligence of the board has significant and negative effect on audit report lag. However, this study finds no evidence that the audit committee independence, the size, independence and diligence of director's board are associated with the audit report lag. In addition, the results of this study also show that there is a significant effect of some control variables such us gender and performance.Practical implicationsThe findings of this article will help to fill the knowledge gap in relation with this research issue in developing countries especially in Tunisian context, because this investigation exposed more than ever the vital role of auditor on the audit report lag. This research will make investors and stakeholders aware of the importance of governance mechanisms put in place in firms to reduce audit report delays in emerging markets, like Tunisia. Then, this work can help researchers and encourage them to deeply and broadly investigate this issue on other emerging markets.Originality/valueThis study extends the existing literature by examining the relationship between different mechanisms of corporate governance and audit delay in an emerging context and which has been very little explored in this sense namely in the Tunisian context. On the empirical level, the study contributes by using a dynamic panel that has not been mentioned much in previous research. Dynamic panel models include lagged dependent variables. The presence of these variables makes it possible to model a partial adjustment mechanism.