2026 Global Gathering Programming

• Visa and Security Support
• Equity Fund
• Programming
• Hotels and Transportation Options
• Navigating Estoril
• Navigating Portugal
• Global Gathering Homepage

In several months, we will be sharing a call for proposals where approved participants can submit ideas for Circles, Meetups, and Booths. In response to your feedback, more skillshares will be included in the 2026 event programming.

The Format

Circles, or collaborative discussions that draw out collective wisdom, facilitate brainstorming, or help problem-solve around challenges.

Booths allow projects to use one of the venue’s permanent structures to showcase their work, demo a tool, run a skillshare, or have one-to-one conversations with participants.

Meetups are designed to gather participants who share a commonality or interest in a more informal setting. While Team CommUNITY will be coordinating a select number of topical and regional networking meetups, participants will be provided with tools to self-organize their own meetups.

Villages: In some cases, we will be grouping Circles and Booths into Villages, which are community-led hubs focused on specific themes, regions or areas of practices. In the past, organizations and networks have hosted villages centered on their core work, shared challenges, or regional priorities.

2026 Themes

Ecosystem Security, Sustainability, and Health

• Best practices for navigating new organizational realities
• Organizational security in low-resource environments
• Digital security training for at-risk groups and journalists
• Challenges and updates in security education and training
• Whistleblowing protection
• Identifying and onboarding new funders to the field

Surveillance and Censorship

• Current research and frontline insights
• Threat and/or trend discovery
• New and emerging spyware developments
• Combatting smart cities, data brokers, and other privacy intrusive tools
• Open source circumvention and encrypted communications tools, as well as protocols and effective approaches to tool use
• Emerging technological challenges and trends in digital surveillance and censorship
• Challenges and updates in security education and training

Alternative Infrastructure and Digital Sovereignty

• Building decentralized and community-owned technologies.
• Common challenges and practical approaches to self-hosting, adopting open source tools, and divesting from extractive technologies.

Emerging and Urgent Tech Issues: Disinformation, AI, Platform Accountability, Internet Blackouts, Etc.

• Updates on current trends in disinformation, platform accountability, and other emerging tech-related issues impacting rights defenders and journalists, prioritizing frontline experiences.
• Developments in platform accountability work, current needs, and brainstorming cross-regional actions.
• Best practices to navigate internet shutdowns.
• Best practices in information integrity, archiving, and combatting disinformation campaigns.
• AI and automated decision-making as it relates to surveillance, censorship, equity, and access.
• Embedding human rights principles into automated processes.

Civil Society Reflections on Tech Regulation

• Updates to laws, governance frameworks, and regulatory approaches shaping digital rights, data protection and privacy, freedom of expression, Internet governance, etc.
• Use of legal and regulatory mechanisms to attack civil society, e.g. SLAPPs.
• Regulatory, technical, and civic responses to emerging risks
• Global impact and implications of regional tech policy and regulation.

Villages

Additionally, we are hoping to host some villages, list to come soon.