2026
35th Meeting
07 - 10 September
This year’s Meeting is dedicated to a prospective analysis of the conditions needed to formulate and promote scientific and technological strategies and public policies for Prevention, Preparedness and Readiness, in order to address emerging societal challenges and public risks in an era of abundant knowledge, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and disinformation. The emphasis will be on promoting international cooperation to foster public health and well-being, together with endogenous resources (e.g., forests, water, energy) and the quality of urban life.
The complexity of these challenges calls for new initiatives at international level, and this year’s Meeting once again has the specific aim of deepening the analysis of the conditions required to promote specific projects for transatlantic cooperation with Africa and Latin America. It will include a discussion of the opportunities and challenges associated with Europe-Mercosur cooperation within the emerging geopolitical framework.
In times of relative technological “dazzlement”, associated with the growing mass adoption of digital systems and AI, as well as the unprecedented growth of Chinese large-scale investment and scientific, technological and productive capacity, is it possible to adopt a humanist, democratically grounded vision of technological development and the mass adoption of digital systems? The 2026 Prospective Meeting will deepen this debate and discuss the opportunity for scientific and technological agendas for prevention, preparedness and readiness that privilege “Human Agency”, with impact in several areas, including public health and the fight against cancer, energy security, and urban and forest governance, among other endogenous resources.
This requires overcoming relevant obstacles, namely the barriers in many sectors and public and private institutions created by risk aversion, lack of imagination and technological ignorance among some relevant actors. These include the bureaucracies that dominate public and private administrations, as well as hospitals, schools and higher education institutions.
The debate will therefore be inspired by the need to revisit science-society relations in strengthening democracies to face emerging challenges and the growing “uncertainty complex” that we are witnessing globally. It includes addressing knowledge-based strategies that are:
- Predictive, including the early identification of challenges and the forecasting of outcomes, including the use of advanced information systems and artificial intelligence;
- Preventive, stimulating early intervention;
- Personalised, aimed at facilitating individual decisions, stimulating collective approaches and avoiding individualism (i.e., countering “me first”); and
- Participatory, including the active involvement of people.
This clearly includes strengthening energy security strategies that ensure the social, economic and environmental sustainability of energy supply in times of the expected full electrification of the economy.
But it also requires designing, developing and implementing science-based strategies across the entire translational continuum in the fight against cancer, cardiovascular diseases or mental illnesses, among other areas of public health, including frontier science and disruptive as well as collaborative innovation, in order to move away from the narrative of making these diseases “chronic” and act on their early detection and prevention.
It also requires urban planning and management systems and forest governance systems that fully integrate new information (e.g., very high-resolution satellite images) to monitor and govern social well-being, urban and forest maintenance and sustainability, together with people’s quality of life.
These systems necessarily imply a complex logistics network of operations across all areas and sectors, from public health to urban and forest management, requiring new forms of public governance guided by appropriate public policies. This requires integrating systems based on digital platforms geared towards the common user, which are easy to adopt, together with participatory and democratically stimulating “command and control” actions, moving away from police interventions with a totalitarian orientation. But it also requires new knowledge aimed at reducing the “time to action” between digital analysis and planning and action on the ground with practical effects in terms of prevention, preparedness and readiness. In other words, it requires drawing on new knowledge of “Analytic Intelligence”.
In a rapidly changing international context, and following the launch and formulation of the “K4P Alliances – Knowledge for People, the Planet and Prosperity through Partnerships” network after the 2022 and 2023 Meetings, this year’s Meeting aims to deepen the debate on the conditions required to promote new ideas for cooperation between Europe, Mercosur and Africa, including the security of populations in the South Atlantic. It necessarily includes the debate on the inclusive and green transition in the emerging digital era, as well as contributing to eradicating poverty and reducing inequalities at local and global level. It therefore includes the debate on endogenous resources, energy and environmental security, together with civil protection and public health, in order to strengthen democratic regimes and civic participation.
The debate will include a deeper exploration of the challenges associated with revisiting approaches to scientific and technological culture in order to strengthen public support for, and understanding of, science in an era of abundant knowledge, artificial intelligence and disinformation. It is crucial to learn how to deal with uncertainty, together with the fragmentation of multilateralism and the polarisation of our societies. Promoting the influence of scientists and scientific institutions in society and ensuring the relevance of science and technology to social needs are essential measures. The real issue is not an intrinsic lack of trust in science, but rather the fact that trust in science has become collateral damage in broader processes of political polarisation.
This challenge includes the “fight for truth” and against disinformation and false information (i.e., “fake news”). In other words, individual attitudes and social behaviours are inseparable from the way people take risks, foster public investment and promote innovation as a common capability. And this requires strengthening scientific and technological culture as an effective “global public good” and a fundamental “value”. This challenge is aligned with the recent position of the International Science Council, which argues that “science has two fundamental attributes that underpin its value as a global public good: that knowledge claims and the evidence on which they are based are made openly available for scrutiny, and that the results of scientific research are communicated quickly and efficiently, so that all those who wish or need to access these results are able to do so”.

