COP31 – Briefing Paper

The 31st Conference of the Parties (COP31) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will take place in Antalya, Türkiye, between 9 and 20 November 2026. This briefing paper provides a high-level explanation of the main themes of COP31, the legacy of COP30, the COP negotiating blocs and their aims, and COP31’s possible outcomes.

At COP31, the Parties to the UNFCCC (197 states plus the EU) will come together to take action towards achieving their collective climate goals under the 2015 Paris Agreement and the UNFCCC, including holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. Building on the progress made at prior COPs, COP31 is expected to advance substantive negotiations on the just transition, mitigation, the Global Goal on Adaptation and the role and sources of science in the UNFCCC process.

What are the main themes of COP31?

Each year, the Conference of the Parties gives states and civil society organisations the opportunity to make representations on each article of the Paris Agreement, as well as on the development of mechanisms, alliances, working groups, processes and rules thereunder.

In a novel arrangement for COP31, the COP Presidency has been divided between Türkiye and Australia. Türkiye, as the host, will be the Official COP31 President and take responsibility for the COP Action Agenda as well as overseeing the process of adopting decisions at the final closing session. Australia will take on the role of the President of Negotiations and will have exclusive authority in relation to the negotiations, including the development of draft texts for adoption.

As a call to action, the host nation typically announces key negotiating focus areas. This year, Türkiye has issued three formal letters from the Presidency which contain the ten priority themes of the COP Action Agenda:

1. Zero Waste.
2. Oceans and Seas.
3. Food Security.
4. Climate-Resilient Cities.
5. Climate Implementation Bridge (BRIDGE).
6. Youth and Education.
7. Green Industrialisation.
8. Clean Energy Transition.
9. Rio Synergy.
10. Dynamic and Resilient Health Systems.

Türkiye’s Action Agenda will not lead to a direct negotiated outcome. Instead, Türkiye will facilitate work and events on these themes outside of the negotiations, in line with its framing of COP31 as an “Implementation COP”. Among the most politically significant negotiating issues will be the just transition and the future of the Mitigation Work Programme.

Recognised in the preamble to the Paris Agreement, the “just transition” refers to the principle that the shift to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy should occur fairly, while minimising its harms and maximising its benefits to workers, communities and countries. A cross-cutting issue, the just transition influences every major aspect of the COP negotiations. At COP30, Parties agreed to develop a just transition mechanism (known as the “Belém Action Mechanism”) to facilitate the international cooperation, technical assistance, capacity-building and knowledge-sharing required to ensure a just transition takes place. Parties are expected to “operationalise” the mechanism and decide on its practical scope and functions at COP31. However, fundamental disagreements on this issue remain, with roughly 25 possible functions of the mechanism still to be narrowed down and agreed.

Climate change mitigation, meaning the reduction of net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, is crucial to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. Under the Paris Agreement, Parties submit Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which set out their mitigation and other commitments. Many Parties, and especially fossil fuel producing nations, are sensitive to any language or initiatives that may undermine the nationally determined nature of NDCs by imposing targets or goals for states’ mitigation efforts. Consequently, there is currently only one negotiation stream dedicated to scaling up mitigation ambitions and implementation measures, the Mitigation Work Programme (MWP). At COP31 Parties will negotiate on whether to continue the work of the MWP beyond 2026 and, if so, what it should aim to achieve. Two camps have emerged: AOSIS, the EU and the LDC Group are pushing for more substance to the MWP’s work (for more on these groups, see below). The LMDC Group is seeking to protect nationally determined mitigation commitments and to not allow the MWP to produce sectoral targets or benchmarks for emission reductions or language implying that current NDCs are insufficient. The urgency of these negotiations is reinforced by the UNEP’s 2026 Emissions Gap Report, which confirmed that 2024 was the first individual calendar year to record more than 1.5°C of warming above the pre-industrial average. The UNEP report concluded that a sustained overshoot is now imminent and that full implementation of current NDCs, followed by comparable effort, would still result in warming of about 2.6°C this century.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the United Nations body established to neutrally assess the science related to climate change. Its reports have long been the key source of science for the UNFCCC process. However, some Parties, especially in the LMDC Group, have sought to widen the sources of scientific inputs into the UNFCCC. This issue relates closely to the Global Stocktake (GST), the five-yearly assessment of Parties’ progress towards the Paris Agreement’s goals. The GST is expressly required to be carried out in light of the best available science, with IPCC reports to be a key source. Currently, Parties are split on whether the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report (AR7) should be published in time to feed into the second GST (GST2) so that it is based on the best available science. Many LDCs and Small Island Developing States want all parts of the report delivered in time for GST2, while others want the part on mitigation to be delivered in 2029, too late to inform GST2. The IPCC suspended its 65th plenary session in October 2026 without consensus, the sixth consecutive meeting to fail to reach an agreement on this issue. 

What is the legacy of COP30?

As with all COPs, COP31 will build on the legacy of its predecessor, COP30, held in Belém, Brazil, in November 2025. COP30 was billed as the “COP of implementation”, and its key outcomes were an agreement on 59 adaptation indicators, a commitment to triple adaptation finance by 2035 and the “Global Mutirão” decision.

Perhaps COP30’s most enduring legacy will be procedural. To avoid a fight over the adoption of the agenda, the Brazilian Presidency moved four of the most contentious topics (climate-related trade measures, climate finance, the 1.5°C goal and transparency) into “Presidency consultations”, which ultimately produced the Global Mutirão decision. After Parties failed to agree on transitioning away from fossil fuels and halting deforestation, these initiatives were also taken forward outside the negotiations as “Presidency initiatives”. Although such measures did in part lead to the 2026 Santa Marta conference, at which a coalition of 57 countries launched a process to develop a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, it remains to be seen how such initiatives will impact the negotiations at COP31, if at all.

The Belém Adaptation Indicators agreed at COP30 provided a common framework for measuring progress towards the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA). Parties are now engaged in the Belém–Addis Vision process to test and refine these indicators and integrate them into national adaptation planning and reporting. However, Parties disagree over whether this work should be Party-driven or expert-driven, and over its relationship to the COP30 commitment to triple adaptation finance. Although this commitment was made in the COP30 Global Mutirão decision, it did not specify a baseline, a precise target or where the additional funding would come from. One widely adopted interpretation is that tripling an earlier agreed goal of USD 40bn would imply a new target of USD 120bn of adaptation finance to be provided annually by 2035, although disagreement remains over how the commitment should be delivered in practice.

What are the negotiating blocs at COP31 and what are their aims?

To strengthen their negotiating positions and to streamline negotiations, like-minded Parties to the UNFCCC often form negotiating blocs or groups. Membership of a bloc is not exclusive, and countries may join different blocs or represent themselves depending on their views on the issue under discussion. Some of these blocs and their respective aims are listed below:

What would success at COP31 look like?

Success at COP31 will be measured against Türkiye’s ten main conference themes as well as the key negotiating topics of the just transition and mitigation. Inevitably, success will be viewed subjectively, depending on the aims of participating nations and their negotiating blocs. The following are key areas for progress:

1. Making the Dual Presidency Work

The split Presidency will test the flexibility of the UNFCCC framework and the ability of the two presiding Parties to work together and share authority. With Türkiye responsible for the final closing session which is often crucial for the adoption of contentious decisions, it remains to be seen whether the two Presidencies can act in concert to get such decisions over the line. Early signs are encouraging: a successful Pre-COP was held in Fiji and Tuvalu and the two Presidencies have issued a joint letter weaving Türkiye’s Action Agenda together with Australia’s negotiation track. If the two Presidencies work in tandem, the Action Agenda’s practical initiatives and the negotiations could reinforce one another. If they do not, expect difficult decisions to be delayed and pushed to future summits and a fractious final session.

2. A Meaningful Decision on Mitigation 

Should Parties allow the MWP to end at COP31, or simply agree to its continuance without agreeing on how its work will increase mitigation ambition, this would be a serious failure in a key part of the UNFCCC process. A marker of success would be for the COP30 Presidency’s fossil fuel and deforestation roadmaps, and the voluntary Santa Marta process, to be re-integrated into negotiations or at least referenced in a negotiated text. Similarly, any negotiated reference to fossil fuels would be significant.

3. Operationalising the Just Transition Mechanism

A meaningful decision in the flagship negotiating stream at COP31 that operationalises the just transition mechanism rather than just continuing dialogue on the topic would provide an institutional basis for advancing the issue and could help to rebuild trust among developing-country Parties.

4. Protecting the Role of Science

Concerns have been raised about the underrepresentation of scientists from developing countries in IPCC processes. However, continuing disagreement over the timetable for the Seventh Assessment Report (AR7) risks preventing its three Working Group reports from being available in time to inform the second Global Stocktake (GST2). The IPCC has repeatedly been unable to reach consensus on the timetable, leaving unresolved whether GST2 will have the benefit of its latest comprehensive assessments of climate science, impacts and mitigation. A positive outcome at COP31 would be a clear political signal in support of a timetable that enables AR7 to inform GST2, together with reaffirmation of the IPCC’s central role in providing authoritative scientific assessments to the UNFCCC process. This would help ensure that the next Global Stocktake is informed by the best available science, while recognising the need for the IPCC process itself to be geographically inclusive.

5. A COP Fit for the Implementation Era

Above all, COP31 needs to demonstrate that the COP process remains relevant in an era focused on implementation. COP30 and COP31 have now both been billed as “implementation COPs” in consecutive years. Parties recognise that negotiations must be matched by real world progress in implementing their national and collective climate change commitments. Rather than waiting for the UNFCCC process to catch up, governments, businesses and investors continue to press ahead outside the formal process. Success at COP31 could include Türkiye’s Climate Implementation Bridge generating a pipeline of investable projects, alongside the first progress update on the Baku to Belém Roadmap demonstrating credible progress towards mobilising USD 1.3tn annually by 2035.

On 9 November 2026, the world’s eyes will turn to Antalya. Look out for further articles and please reach out if you have any questions.

Key contacts: Wynne Lawrence and Nigel Brook