SUSTAIN believes that lively exchange, collaboration, and encounters across the globe are essential for ICOM’s work. Thus SUSTAIN engages with members through regularly scheduled conferences. These afford members opportunities to share how they foster sustainability in museums. These face-to-face encounters require travel, in most cases by aircraft. SUSTAIN aims to find solutions that both promote international exchange and act in a resource-efficient manner in the context of the current climate crisis.

Museums for Our Futures: Adapt, Regenerate, Sustain

19 November 2026, 08:00-20:00 UTC

Conference Schedule

Registration (using EventBrite)

The ICOM SUSTAIN Annual Conference 2026 will explore the evolving role of museums and cultural institutions in addressing the intertwined challenges of climate emergency, biodiversity loss, and social transformation. 

Aligned with the theme of the International Museum Day 2026, “Museums in a Divided World”, the conference recognizes the urgent need for museums to act as spaces of dialogue, connection, and healing in increasingly fragmented societies. In this context, the proposed lines of Adapt, Regenerate, Sustain are framed not only as conceptual approaches, but as pathways for concrete solutions, proposals, and practices that actively respond to the concerns raised by ICOM this year. 

By fostering exchange across disciplines and geographies, the conference seeks to generate actionable insights and collaborative strategies that empower museums to bridge divides, strengthen social cohesion, and contribute to more just, resilient, and regenerative futures. 

Under the theme “Museums for Our Futures: Adapt, Regenerate, Sustain”, the conference invites museum professionals, ICOM Members, cultural practitioners, researchers, and policymakers to engage with three interconnected lines of thought: 

ADAPT 

Responding to the climate emergency, this track explores climate action, risk management, institutional transformation, climate leadership, and the role of museums in fostering community resilience and collective responses to climate change and climate justice. 

REGENERATE 

Moving beyond sustainability, this track embraces regenerative approaches that aim to repair and restore ecological and social systems. It includes perspectives on reconciliation, social cohesion, ecological thinking, and the integration of diverse knowledge systems, including Indigenous and community-based approaches to envision other possible futures. 

SUSTAIN 

Focusing on sustainability and sustainable development, this track addresses how museums maintain and preserve cultural and natural heritage while improving operational practices, technical facilities, and environmental commitment, including sustainable development activities. 

SUSTAIN encourages formation of Watch Hubs. These hubs will facilitate gatherings of museum professionals who travel shorter distances and thus avoid air travel. Attendees at the hubs can participate in the conference together via digital access, exchange ideas in person, and carry out key elements of typical conferences such as a museum tour or coffee breaks and networking—locally and in small groups. We invite all ICOM members to consider the possibility of establishing a hub at their own institution or in another suitable, safe space and to contact SUSTAIN for registering the hub and if applicable promoting it.