Agenda - 2026
If you are interested in taking part, please contact andreas.schonning@aid-expo.com
Please note: The agenda may be subject to change as programme details are finalised.
08:00 – 09:00 | Registration Opens
09:00 – 09:05 | Opening Remarks
Simon Meldrum
Innovative Finance, Private Sector & Innovation Unit, IFRC & Executive Director, HFF
Nicholas Rutherford
Managing Director
AidEx
09:05 – 09:30 | Presentation: 2025 Global Humanitarian Assistance Report: Challenges & opportunities for humanitarian financing
The Summit opens with a data-driven presentation of the 2025 Global Humanitarian Assistance Report, which paints a sobering picture of the sector’s financial health. Amid unprecedented funding shortfalls, shrinking donor commitments, and rising needs, the report underscores the urgent need to rethink how we fund and govern humanitarian action. The report also highlights the growing role of non-traditional donors and emerging trends in anticipatory financing.
Mike Pearson
Research Fellow, Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG); Global Humanitarian Assistance Lead, ALNAP
09:30 - 10:45 | Opening Plenary: From liquidity crunch to financial transformation: Reimagining humanitarian financing for a volatile world
The humanitarian sector is facing a growing liquidity crisis that threatens to paralyse operations in the near term. Recent analysis from GHA and ICVA point to shrinking donor disbursements, prolonged delays in funding flows, and dangerously low cash reserves across agencies and NGOs - leaving frontline actors unable to plan, scale, or sustain critical humanitarian operations. This exposes the fragility of a funding architecture overdependent on ad hoc appeals, short-term grants, and a narrow donor base. Yet within this challenge lies an opportunity to reimagine how humanitarian finance functions, drawing on lessons from other sectors that have successfully introduced cost-efficient and predictable models. From pooled funds and anticipatory finance to blended capital approaches, practical innovations are emerging that can help humanitarian actors manage risk, improve liquidity, and strengthen resilience.
This opening plenary brings together leaders from finance, policy, and humanitarian response to explore a central question: How can we address the liquidity crisis of today while building the financing system we need for tomorrow?
10:45 - 11:00 | Coffee Break
Churchill Room
11:00 – 12:30 | Panel: Beyond traditional aid – New financing partnerships and leaders for humanitarian action
As traditional aid structures face increasing strain, the humanitarian system must rethink who leads, who funds, and how responsibility for crisis response is shared. This session brings together the emerging donors, philanthropies, and innovative financing actors reshaping the future of humanitarian action. These non-traditional partners are filling a critical gap left by overstretched aid budgets and introducing new forms of capital, stronger regional and local ownership, and fresh perspective drawn from climate finance, blended finance, and private sector engagement.
Gielgud Room
11:00 – 12:30 | Discussion: Developing partnerships with financial institutions – What would it take to mobilise $10 billion in humanitarian impact capital by 2030?
This breakout session brings together industry leaders from across capital markets, the humanitarian, asset management, and impact investment worlds to explore what it would take to mobilise $10 billion in humanitarian innovative finance by 2030. The discussion will address the practical pathways for scaling investments, what it takes to build investor confidence and incentivise private capital, and the reforms needed to build an investable humanitarian finance ecosystem.
12:30 – 13:30 | Networking Lunch
Churchill Room
13:30 – 14:45 | Panel: Aligning risk financing with anticipatory action
As anticipatory action has gained significant traction within the humanitarian sector in recent years, demonstrating that acting before crises peak can save more lives, protect livelihoods, and reduce costs. To scale anticipatory action, the sector must move decisively from ex post disaster response to ex ante risk management – embedding early action within integrated disaster risk financing systems. This means linking forecast-based triggers to pre-arranged funding, combining instruments such as contingency funds, insurance, and crisis bonds to ensure resources flow when and where they are most needed. This session explores how humanitarian, development, and finance actors can work together to create systems that align risk financing that are faster, more predictable, and capable of addressing today’s escalating climate and conflict risks.
Amir Sethu
Head of Sustainability and ESG
MS Amlin
Andrea Camargo
Inclusive Risk Financing Lead
World Food Programme
Ben Webster
Associate Director - Advisory, Training & Engagement
Centre for Disaster Protection
Christina Bennett
CEO
START Network
Gielgud Room
13:30 – 14:00 | Case Study: TBC
14:00 – 14:15 | Break
14:15 – 14:45 | Case Study: TBC
Churchill Room
15:15 – 15:45 | Fireside Chat: Rethinking the role of development finance institution in humanitarian blended finance
Cash now accounts for around a fifth of global humanitarian aid and has transformed the experience of people receiving support. Yet this has not translated into deeper financial inclusion. At the same time, DFIs are under pressure to operatecloser to crisis settings and engage earlier in the resilience and livelihoods space. This session brings these two trends together. Building on PROPARCO’s recent report on “Financial Inclusion of People Benefiting from Humanitarian Cash Transfers” the session will explore how humanitarian cash can be linked to long term financial inclusion and how DFIs can play a catalytic role in making that possible. We will discuss the systemic barriers that keep accounts dormant, the importance of economic participation, and the types of partnerships needed to create viablefinancial pathways for people in humanitarian settings.
Through the cases from multiple regions, the discussion will demonstrate how blended finance can support local financial institutions, strengthen payment infrastructure, and crowd in investment to humanitarian and FCA settings.
15:45 – 16:15 | Break
16:15 – 16:45 | Fireside chat: Financing from the ground-up: localisation and community-led blended finance
Local organisations are the first and often only responders in some of the world’s most complex crises - and yet they continue to receive only a tiny share of global financing. In this fireside chat, we will dissect insights from nearly five decades of community-rooted humanitarian action across Yemen across health, WASH, protection, food security and climate-affected settings to explore how financing structures can strengthen “good” localisation: aligning funding with community priorities, embedding equity in risk allocation, and empowering local ownership.
Gielgud Room
15:15 – 15:45 | Case Study: TBC
15:45 – 16:15 | Break
16:15 – 16:45 | Case Study: TBC
14:45 - 15:15 | Coffee Break
16:45 - 18:00 | Closing CEO Dialogue: Financing resilience in fragile and conflict affected humanitarian settings
This session focuses on how capital providers can operate more effectively across the Humanitarian-Development-Peace (HDP) Nexus to support vulnerable communities in fragile and conflict affected settings. It examines what is required to finance resilient systems and functioning markets in environments defined by volatility, weak institutions, and chronic underinvestment. The dialogue moves beyond HDP Nexus and asks what DFIs, philanthropic investors, governments, and humanitarian actors must do together to reduce risk, create investable pathways, and strengthen resilience at scale.