Here we go!
The kick-off meeting of the Euro-Mediterranean Water Forum Rome 2026 will take place on November 6th and 7th.
The meeting will be held in Barcelona, immediately following the two-day "Regional Platform on Water" organized by the Union for the Mediterranean. It will be an opportunity to illustrate the Forum's general architecture and its key messages, launching the discussion on the themes, panels, and focuses that the Euro-Mediterranean community will want to place at the heart of the Rome event.
The program includes institutional greetings from the event's co-organizers and representatives of the Spanish government and the European Union, followed by a presentation of the Forum, its program, space reserved for side events, the possibility of hosting parallel technical sessions, and the major Expo that will take place in the "Nuvola" itself, the prestigious venue chosen for the Forum.
At the heart of the Forum are three key messages: Hope and Confidence in the Mediterranean community's new resilience, the effort to broaden the debate on the future of water to new actors and new production chains, and the commitment to addressing concrete solutions and pressing political commitments.
We propose “Achieving water security in the Mediterranean by 2050: the way forward” as the Forum's overarching theme, indicating an ambitious and concrete goal toward which all efforts should be directed.
Along this certainly difficult and challenging road, we will first discuss traditional issues that represent key turning points, curves, and changes in direction necessary to achieve the goal: climate change and extreme events, the WEFE Nexus and a new balance between the different “demands for water”, local and national governance issues, water finance and investments, the water footprint and the "value" of water, Blue Diplomacy, and technological and innovative solutions in the sector.
These issues and others emerging from the Barcelona debate will be explored in depth in the working groups, coordinated by One Water, IME, and the Union for the Mediterranean, which will be established and begin work immediately after Barcelona.
On the second day of work, we will begin by situating our Forum within a busy and interesting series of international events that will shape 2026 and 2027, from the United Nations Water Conference to the celebration of the end of the Water Action Decade in 2028.
The final session in Barcelona (Envisioning the Future of Water) will highlight several unique perspectives, some of them original, that will be given space and relevance throughout the Forum: from the search for stronger continuum between freshwater and sea dimensions, to the focus on urban contexts and local governance, to the new European regulations at the heart of the Water Strategy and resilience and adaptation initiatives in the MENA region.
