UN High Level Week 2026

High-Level Political Forum 2026

The HLPF is the main platform for the review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The aim of the HLPF is to facilitate a system-wide coordination of sustainable development policies. The HLPF is held annually to review progress on select SDGs, and country-level progress on the SDGs by a number of countries, known as Voluntary National Reviews. The aim of the Voluntary National Reviews is to share experiences with accelerating and implementing the 2030 Agenda. A negotiated Ministerial Declaration is produced at the end of the HLPF Summit. 

Every four years, the HLPF convenes as an SDG Summit and is elevated to a Summit that is attended by Heads of State and Government. The last SDG Summit was held in 2023, at the halfway point of the timeline for achieving the SDGs. The next SDG Summit will be held in 2027. 

The 2026 HLPF convened from 7-15th July under the theme, ‘Transformative, equitable, innovative and coordinated actions for the 2030 Agenda and its SDGs for a sustainable future for all’. This Forum focused on the following SDGs:

• SDG 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
• SDG 7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
• SDG 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation 
• SDG 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
• SDG 17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development

The objectives of the 2026 HLPF was to conduct in-depth reviews of the above SDGs, identify the challenges to their implementation and highlight the ‘transformative, equitable, innovative, and coordinated actions’ to accelerate progress on these goals, in line with this year’s theme. The 2026 HLPF will also have the additional purpose of contributing to discussion leading to the 2027 SDG Summit. The 2026 HLPF dedicated thematic sessions to ‘countries in special situations’, which included African countries; Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries, Middle-Income Countries, and Small Island Developing States. 

Summary

The President of ECOSOC publishes a factual summary of the HLPF high-level week in July that highlights the key policy messages and deliberations of the Forum. The President of ECOSOC stated that the deliberations of the high-level week were informed by the UN Secretary-General’s respective reports on the Progress towards the SDGs, the theme of the 2026 HLPF, and Sustainable development and globalisation: long-term trends and challenges. The Secretary-General’s report on the Progress towards the SDGs stated that 36 percent of the 139 targets for the SDGs are on track towards making moderate progress, while 49 percent are only making marginal progress. 15 percent of the targets have regressed below their 2015 baseline when the SDGs were adopted. There have been notable gains on some SDGs such as increased social protection, reducing maternal and infant mortality, and increased access to water and sanitation, and electricity. However, the progress on the SDGs is highly uneven, as interconnected crises and global shocks have set progress back.

During the HLPF, participants ranging from Member States to civil society and experts, highlighted that the barriers to implementing the SDGs included lack of financing and rising debt, limited market access, increasing vulnerabilities to climate change, and the digital divide. For example, there is an estimated annual financing gap of $4 trillion for developing countries. These challenges are amplified by ongoing disruptions to global supply chains, geopolitical tensions, global economic volatility, and rising inflation. The Ministerial Declaration reaffirmed the importance of multilateralism and cooperation to address these challenges and achieve sustainable development. 

Thirty-six countries presented their Voluntary National Reviews at the 2026 HLPF. The main takeaways from the thirty-six VNRs is that the SDGs continue to be integrated into the Member States’ national development policies. As a result, progress is being made on SDGs such as expanding infrastructure, and gains on women’s empowerment and gender equality. Many countries took note of changes in their demography and the need to make further investments in human capital. Climate change was also highlighted as a major concern for many countries, particularly the Small Island Developing States and African states. Many VNRs also highlighted how geopolitical conflict has shaped their national policies on achieving the SDGs, from dedicating resources to countries such as Ukraine, to themselves being impacted by geopolitical conflicts, as Bahrain stressed with regards to bombings from Iran. 

In the negotiations on the Ministerial Delegation Israel called for a vote to remove the language in paragraph 18 that committed states ‘to remove the obstacles to the full realization of the right to self-determination of peoples living under colonial and foreign occupation’. This paragraph was retained by a vote of 113 in favour to 1 against, the latter being Israel. This underscores the message that is being repeated in many multilateral fora, including the general debate of the HLPF 2026: peace and sustainable development are mutually reinforcing; conflict continues to reverse development gains in many parts of the world. 

On their plans to accelerate the implementation of the SDGs, many countries called for increases in financing and more coordinated responses between their local policies and international cooperation. Calls for international cooperation will be hard to translate into reality. During negotiations on the final Ministerial Declaration, the Group of 77 Developing Countries proposed that the reference to the United Arab Emirates Consensus be deleted from the final Declaration.  The UAE Consensus came out of the COP 28 Meeting in 2023 where Member States committed to tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030, and to achieve net zero by 2050. The UAE Consensus is an important declaration for achieving SDG 7 on ensuring access to energy, however, Member States ultimately voted in favour of its deletion from the declaration, with a vote of 82 in favour to 54 against, with 12 abstentions. This signalled resistance from developing countries to commit to explicit targets on renewable energy, which can delay collective progress to achieving targets under SDG 7, including increasing renewable energy in the global energy mix, and facilitating investment and access to clean energy research and technology. 

At the closing of the HLPF, Navid Hanif, Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, stated that the progress towards the SDGs are possible, ‘but it is not automatic’, and requires political leadership to ensure ‘policies are integrated, implementation is country-led and financing supports national progress’. 

The UN has also been playing its part in strengthening its political leadership. In 2025, the UN launched the UN80 initiative to streamline the organisation to make it more responsive and efficient to the complex problems of today. Part of this revitalisation plan is addressing its ongoing liquidity issues, triggered by delays and shortfalls in the contributions from Member States. The UN80 was adopted by consensus by the UN General Assembly, and implementation of its Action Plan is ongoing. The HLPF Ministerial Declaration recognised the effort of the UN80 initiative and other revitalisation processes across the UN system, which would reinforce the UN development system and advance the implementation of Agenda 2030 and the SDGs. The President of ECOSOC noted that stakeholders at the HLPF stressed that UN reform must be careful to avoid stripping away any voices from stakeholders. In this case, the point was raised by a representative from the Major Group for Children and Youth, a UN General Assembly-mandated space to facilitate the voice of children and young people.

The message from the UN is that the SDGs are not beyond reach. Greater policy coherence through a ‘whole-of-government approach’, alignment of finance, and evidence-informed decisions are key to making and maintaining progress on the remaining goals and ensuring transformative action. 

The road ahead remains challenging. Faced with cuts in development assistance, increased geopolitical conflict, and questions around multilateralism, achieving the SDGs would require unprecedented levels of political will and cooperation. Current trends suggest that this is unlikely to happen anytime soon. In 2026, military spending reached a record of $2.9 trillion at the same time that development assistance dropped to all time lows on record. Recent data published by UNESCO showed that 113 countries were spending more on debt servicing than education, as calls for reforms in the International Financial Architecture remain slow. Finally, the contestation around the deletion of the reference to the UAE Consensus above further demonstrates absence of political action to accelerate progress on the SDGs.

Conclusion 

As the UN and multilateralism goes through its own transformations, it remains to be seen how the international community can extend the progress on the SDGs beyond 36 percent for the remaining three years. As multilateralism is called to do more with less in the face of declining cooperation and against a backdrop of institutional reform, the demand for political will be greater than ever if the UN and international community hopes to make significant gains on the SDGs. Talks on the post-2030 agenda are already beginning to take place, however, if the political will cannot be found to achieve the targets under the current 17 SDGs, we cannot begin to think beyond them.