06 November 2026, Antalya, TR: The 2026 United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP31, opens on November 9 in Antalya, Turkey, running for eleven days through November 20, with a World Leaders’ Summit set for November 11 and 12 at the Antalya Expo Center. The summit is co-led by Turkey, which holds the presidency through Murat Kurum as President-Designate, alongside Australia’s Chris Bowen, who is serving as President of Negotiations, an arrangement that followed an earlier dispute between the two countries over hosting rights for this year’s talks.
Organizers have billed this year’s gathering as an “implementation COP,” with a central focus on turning previously announced national climate plans into action rather than negotiating new headline pledges. Nearly 50 parties to the UN climate process have still not filed updated nationally determined contributions, adding pressure on negotiators to secure outstanding submissions during the two weeks of talks. The summit follows a pre-COP meeting held in Fiji in early October and a leaders’ event in Tuvalu, both intended to elevate the concerns of small island and climate vulnerable states ahead of Antalya.
Food security named among the summit’s stated priorities
Among the priority areas set out ahead of the conference, food security has been listed alongside clean energy transition, climate finance, resilient cities, oceans, methane and waste reduction, and green industrialization. The stated food security goal calls for dedicated roadmaps linking sustainable agricultural systems, water availability and rural livelihoods, along with a target of providing climate resilient agricultural practice training to all young farmers globally by 2035. Organizers have also framed this year’s talks as a “triple COP,” aiming to integrate circular economies, sustainable agriculture, food security and biodiversity goals into a single policy track, with cross-convention cooperation planned alongside the parallel COP17 meetings of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has continued to press for agriculture and food systems to receive greater attention in the formal COP negotiating process, noting that agriculture accounts for roughly 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions while also representing a significant part of the potential solution through practices such as improved soil management and reduced food loss. The organization has pointed to an annual financing gap of around 1.3 trillion dollars for agri-food systems globally, arguing that mobilizing climate finance toward food and farming remains one of the clearest opportunities available to negotiators at COP31 and beyond.
On the sidelines of the formal negotiations, a forum focused specifically on agriculture and food system resilience is scheduled for November 10 in Antalya, bringing together representatives from agribusiness and the broader food industry. Confirmed participants include Bayer’s vice president for global sustainability partnerships and strategy, Amit Trikha, and the International Fertilizer Association’s chief executive and director general, Alzbeta Klein, alongside executives from major food and consumer goods companies. Sessions are expected to cover resource efficiency in agriculture, soil health, the scaling of climate resilient farming innovation, and the role of digital tools in helping farmers adapt to changing weather patterns.
The overall adaptation finance gap facing developing countries under their national climate plans has been estimated at between 5.6 trillion and 7.1 trillion dollars, a figure that spans all sectors rather than agriculture alone, underscoring the scale of the financing challenge negotiators face as they look to translate the food security priority and other action agenda items into concrete commitments over the course of the Antalya talks. An official Antalya Ocean Declaration is also expected to be among the outcomes negotiators aim to finalize before the summit concludes on November 20.
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