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

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

Surveillance and Censorship

• Showcasing current research and frontline insights
• Conversations that allow for threat and/or trend discovery
• New and emerging spyware developments
• Combatting smart cities, data brokers, and other privacy intrusive tools
• Showcasing open source circumvention tools and encrypted communication tools, as well as protocols, and effective approaches
• Brainstorming emerging technological challenges and trends in online surveillance and censorship, and collaborative problem solving

• Challenges and updates in security education and training

Alternative Infrastructure and Digital Sovereignty

• Educational sessions focused on how to build decentralized, community-owned technologies and protocols.
• Advice on hosting, potential tools, and common problems, and suggestion of open source tools.

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

• Updates on current trends related to disinformation, platform accountability, and other tech-related emerging issues impacting rights defenders and journalists, prioritizing frontline experiences, and understanding impacts on democratic process and public trust (for example, during elections).
• Information on current disinformation campaigns actions, and discussions on actions needed.
• Developments in platform accountability work, current needs, and brainstorming cross-regional actions.
• Best practices to navigate internet blackouts, particularly during milestone moments (elections, etc).
• Best practices in information integrity, archiving, and defense tactics. Artificial Intelligence and automated decision-making as it relates to surveillance, censorship, equity and access. Algorithmic governance, discussions around how to ensure human rights principles are embedded into automated processes that inform, shape or make decisions that affect people, institutions and societies. especially in areas traditionally governed by human judgment, laws, or public institutions. (policing systems, etc).

Civil Society Reflections on Tech Regulation and Global Implication

• Updates on laws, governance frameworks, and regulatory approaches shaping digital rights, data protection and privacy, freedom of expression, Internet governance, etc.
• SLAPPs and other legal or regulatory attacks on civil society; use and regulation of privacy, security, and encryption technologies
• Regulatory, technical, and civic responses to emerging risks
• Tech and policy regulations impacting globally, such as policies impacting decentralized open source technologies, or using circumvention technologies.

Villages

Additionally, some of the Villages that we hope to host include the following. Reach out if your organization would like to partner to support a Village.

• Spyware Response
• Circumvention Tech Hub
• VPN Community Village
• Secure Communications
• Org Sec Village
• Ecosystem Resilience Salon
• Alternative Infrastructure Builders
• Regional Action Lab