Antalya in Turkey will host next year’s COP31 summit, with Australia’s Adelaide bid finally backing down, although Pacific nations will get the right to hold preparatory events. Turkey has been persistent in pursuit of COP31 having stood aside in 2021 and allowed the UK to hold the meeting in Glasgow.
COP meetings host destinations are meant to be decided by consensus with no voting mechanism in place. Turkey now has only a year to plan the meeting at the Antalya Expo Center. If neither country had been willing to compromise then the meeting would have been held in the German city of Bonn, the headquarters of the UN’s climate body.
Australia had been campaigning to host COP31 next year as a ‘Pacific COP’ alongside low-lying South Pacific nations, which are threatened in particular by rising seas and climate change.
Papua New Guinea did not hold back its disappointment over the decision. Foreign minister Justin Tkatchenko told the AFP news agency he was not happy. “What has COP achieved over the years? Nothing,” he said. “It’s just a talk fest and doesn’t hold the big polluters accountable.”
The lack of agreement on the COP31 venue was becoming an embarrassment for the UN and Australia’s reluctant support for the Turkish bid did bring mall concessions: that their minister will chair the talks following negotiations at COP30, currently being held in Brazil, even though protocol is that a COP president comes from the host country. A pre-COP meeting will also be held on a Pacific island.
Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese put on a brave face over the late withdrawal of the Australian bid, calling the compromise with Turkey an “outstanding result” in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), noting Pacific issues would be “front and centre” at COP31. The compromise decision still has to be ratified by more than 190 countries gathered in Brazil for COP30.
Business Events Adelaide was clearly disappointed to miss out on the 2026 bid but issue a statement saying that being a candidate city had raised the city’s profile, and encouraged global business event organisers to consider the city as a venue in the future.
Business Events Adelaide CEO Damien Kitto said: “Although not directly involved in the bidding process, Business Events Adelaide shares the State Government’s disappointment that COP31 will not be held in Adelaide. Our initial conversations with organisations planning to attend COP – and many others in the sustainability sector – indicated a strong interest in Adelaide as destination renowned for its environmental credentials. We will continue those conversations, and although the ‘main event’ won’t be in South Australia next year, we hope we have piqued the interest of associated organisations to consider Adelaide in future”.
Kitto added: “We understand that many hotels and business event venues were restricting confirmed bookings for October and November 2026 in anticipation of a positive outcome to the COP discussion. Now that Adelaide will not be the host city, we have a plan to support these establishments – many of which are Business Events Adelaide members”.
“Whilst COP would have been the icing on the cake, it is ‘business as usual’ for us as a key economic driver for South Australia,” Kitto added.
Ethiopia meanwhile, has claimed it has secured the support of African negotiators in its bid to host COP32 in 2027.