Next year’s UN climate talks set for Turkey after Australia withdraws bid to be the venue

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BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Turkey will host next year’s annual U.N. climate talks but Australia will preside over the discussions under a compromise in which Australia withdrew from the running to be the venue, the Australian climate minister said.

The 2026 talks will be held in the Turkish resort city of Antalya, Australia’s Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said after his country withdrew its bid late Wednesday to be the U.N. conference venue, this year hosted by Brazil. But in a compromise worked out with Turkey, Bowen is set to act as the conference president overseeing the agenda, he said.

“Obviously, it would be great if Australia could have it all,” Bowen said. “But we can’t have it all.”

The venue for the talks, formally known as the Conference of the Parties, or COP, is rotated annually through five regions in which countries submit nominations. Next year’s region is the Western European and Others Group, which includes both Turkey and Australia — the two countries that had been vying to be host.

David Ritter, who leads Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said the arrangement to split the venue and presiding officer between two countries was “highly unusual,” and that he hoped it wouldn’t diminish the conference mission.

“Whatever the forum, whoever the president, the urgency and focus cannot change, and phasing out fossil fuels and ending deforestation must be at the core of the COP31 agenda,” Ritter said.

A representative of small Pacific island nations said his group had hoped that Australia would be the host country to give his region more of a voice.

Steven Victor, the minister of agriculture, fisheries and environment of Palau, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the coalition of small-island developing states in the Pacific — which are among the most climate vulnerable countries in the world — are still trying to understand how this new arrangement will be implemented.

“It is not something we wanted to see happen, but at least we still have some level of voice in it,” Victor said. “We need to figure out how to amplify that voice and influence the process.”

Ümit Sahin, head of Climate Policy Program at the Istanbul Policy Center at Sabancı University, said “the climate talks at Antalya will be unique in many ways. It’ll be a Mediterranean COP, a Middle Eastern COP, a COP with a Pacific dimension all at once.”

Sahin said that Turkey has sometimes been a bridge between developed and developing countries. He added Turkey will need to carefully navigate its close ties with major oil producers Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan as it begins preparations for hosting the talks.

“These relationships warrant careful scrutiny, as they could shape the impartiality, ambition, and integrity of conference outcomes,” Sahin said.

Ethiopia was announced as host for COP32 earlier this week. Other nations, including India, have already bid to host the talks the year after that.

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Associated Press reporter Sibi Arasu in Bengaluru, India, contributed to this report.

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This story was produced as part of the 2025 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.