ICCA Madrid 2026: “International Arbitration: Local, Global or Both?”

The 27th biennial International Council for Commercial Arbitration (“ICCA”) Congress opens today in Madrid by welcoming the international arbitration community to three days of discussion, reflection, and exchange. From 13 to 15 April 2026, colleagues and friends from around the world will get together not only to engage with some of the pressing questions facing international arbitration today, but also to renew the sense of community that has long made ICCA Congresses so distinctive.

For more than 60 years, ICCA has brought together practitioners, academics, arbitrators, judges, and institutions to reflect on the development of international dispute resolution and the challenges ahead. This year’s theme, “International Arbitration: Local, Global or Both?”, captures a central tension in our field. Arbitration offers a framework for resolving disputes across borders, yet it is shaped, wherever it is practised, by local traditions, procedural approaches, regulatory frameworks, and differing expectations of fairness and legitimacy. Far from weakening arbitration, this has enriched the field, widened the pool of talent, and broadened the ways in which arbitration is understood and experienced.

The theme does not present the local and the global as opposites. Rather, it asks how arbitration can pursue harmonisation where it promotes predictability and trust, while remaining responsive to regional experience and local nuance. What follows highlights how that central question will be explored over the three days of the Congress, from geopolitics and sanctions to soft law, diversity, efficiency, and legitimacy, before closing with ICCA’s broader efforts to widen access to the field.

Day One: Global Pressures, Expanding Frontiers

The first full day of the Congress begins with an opening keynote by Marcin Czepelak (Permanent Court of Arbitration), setting the tone for the discussions ahead. The keynote is followed by short reflections from Anna Joubin-Bret (UNCITRAL), to mark UNCITRAL’s 60^th anniversary. The opening plenary then turns to arbitration’s role in an increasingly unsettled world, reflecting on how arbitration has long served as a neutral platform for cooperation across borders and how it continues to do so in a world shaped by sanctions, enforcement barriers, sovereignty conflicts, and the consequences of armed conflict. There could hardly have been a more relevant place to begin, because international arbitration does not exist in isolation from the world around it, but continually adapts to it.

The programme then moves to two areas in which global developments are producing immediate consequences. One session examines how sanctions affect arbitration proceedings, including their implications for due process, the conduct of proceedings, and the strategic use of anti-suit and anti-arbitration injunctions. Another addresses the right to regulate in the context of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and climate change, exploring the balance between state regulatory authority, investor protections, and the role of arbitration in disputes arising from environmental and climate-related measures.

Later that day, ICCA will be pleased to launch the Research Group on Arbitrator Immunity. Few questions go more directly to arbitral independence, accountability, and confidence in the process than the scope and rationale of arbitrator immunity. As arbitration continues to grow across jurisdictions with different legal traditions and expectations, those questions become all the more pressing, and the Congress offers an important opportunity to introduce that work to the wider arbitration community.

The day concludes by extending the Congress theme into new and highly practical terrain. One panel turns to arbitration in the age of space commerce, while another looks at technical disputes in sectors such as construction, energy, infrastructure, and technology. Together, they show how closely the local and the global continue to meet in practice.

Day Two: Practice, Standards, and the Shape of Proceedings

If the first day looks outward at the pressures acting on arbitration, the second day turns inward to the way arbitration is practised, structured, and experienced: how proceedings are shaped, how standards emerge, and how those involved in the process carry responsibility for its fairness and legitimacy.

The morning opens with a panel on the interplay between local practice and developing universal soft law, focusing on witness examination and document disclosure. It is followed by a session on ethics and soft law, which asks whether current expectations of arbitrators and counsel have become too demanding, and how competing ethical regimes, disclosure standards, and practical realities can be reconciled in cross-border proceedings. This session will also feature ICCA’s Guidelines on Standards of Practice in International Arbitration (“Guidelines”). In Madrid, ICCA marks the launch of the Portuguese and Spanish translations, helping bring the Guidelines to a wider audience.

The next panel broadens the lens to mediation and conciliation, asking why these mechanisms are embraced in some settings and remain underused in others, particularly in disputes involving states. Questions of settlement authority, enforceability, legal culture, and institutional support all come into view, alongside the role of instruments such as the Singapore Convention on Mediation in addressing practical barriers to wider use.

In the afternoon, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the ICCA Yearbook Commercial Arbitration, ICCA will gather to reflect more broadly on the role that publications and scholarship have played in shaping international arbitration as a field. The session also looks ahead to the growing influence of artificial intelligence on the production, dissemination, and use of knowledge in arbitration, and the questions this raises for ethics, procedural fairness, transparency, and confidentiality.

The day closes with panels on diversity and efficiency: how broader representation may strengthen confidence in the process, and how arbitration might recover some of the flexibility and expedition that have long been among its defining promises. ICCA will also use this opportunity to launch an updated Madrid special edition of the Report of the Cross-Institutional Task Force on Gender Diversity in Arbitral Appointments and Proceedings, as well as the second edition of the Drafting Sourcebook for Logistical Matters in Procedural Orders, along with its Portuguese and Spanish translations.

Day Three: Confidence, Legitimacy, and the Road Ahead

The final day of the Congress closes on a theme that lies at the heart of many of the preceding discussions: legitimacy. The concluding plenary on procedural integrity and legitimacy will address the confidence that arbitration inspires, and in some places still struggles to inspire, across different jurisdictions. It will consider sources of scepticism, including concerns about fairness, transparency, cultural misalignment, and the participation of state entities in arbitration, while also focusing on practical ways of building trust.

The Congress will then be drawn to a close with a keynote address by Prof. Dr. Teresa Rodríguez-de-las-Heras Ballell, President of the European Law Institute, and, in keeping with ICCA tradition, an invitation to all participants to San Francisco for the next ICCA Congress in 2028.

As the Congress draws to a close, one idea remains at the centre of our discussions: the theme does not call for a simple choice between the local and the global. Rather, it invites a richer conversation about how international arbitration can continue to harmonise global standards with local practice, so that it remains responsive to change, equal to new challenges, and relevant across jurisdictions.

Broadening Access to International Arbitration

That broader vision of international arbitration must also be reflected in who is able to take part in the conversations that shape our field. ICCA has long sought to open Congress attendance to a broader and more diverse range of practitioners, and Madrid continues that commitment through the ICCA Inclusion Fund, which supports engagement in ICCA activities for those who would not otherwise have adequate means, including attendance at the Congress.

That commitment extends beyond the Congress itself. ICCA also supports emerging talent through the Karl-Heinz Böckstiegel Foundation Scholarship Program, which helps young arbitration academics attend the Congress; the ICCA-Guillermo Aguilar-Alvarez Memorial Prize, which recognises the best published work by an author under 40 and supports the recipient’s attendance at the Congress; and the ICCA Johnny Veeder Fellowship Programme, which provides micro-grants to support study, internships, research, writing, and other one-off projects in international arbitration. Young ICCA likewise continues to create opportunities for newer voices through its Mentoring Programme, which connects younger practitioners with senior arbitration specialists and group advisors over a two-year cycle, and its Essay Competition, whose winner receives a speaking slot at the Congress, publication in the ICCA Congress Series, and support to attend. These efforts matter because they help ensure that international arbitration remains open to talent from different backgrounds, regions, and stages of practice.

Participants joining in Madrid are welcomed, and those following from elsewhere are invited to stay updated through the coverage of the Congress on the Kluwer Arbitration Blog. For further reading on the Congress theme, ICCA has also compiled a dedicated reading list which is available on the ICCA website.