Turkey will host the Cop31 climate conference after the Australian government dropped its push to hold the event in Adelaide at the last moment – despite having invested in a more than three-year campaign.
Independent sources confirmed to the Guardian that the fortnight-long event would be held in Turkey’s Mediterranean resort city of Antalya in November 2026.
The details of a deal were being thrashed out between the countries’ climate ministers, Chris Bowen and Murat Kurum, at the Cop30 conference in the Brazilian city of Belém on Wednesday.
Bowen told journalists on Wednesday night local time that the negotiations were still going, but focused on a deal in which a pre-Cop31 event would be held on a Pacific island, Cop31 itself would be in Turkey, but Australia would take on the Cop presidency and lead the negotiations.
He said this outcome – if agreed – would elevate the interests of the Pacific and Australia and support multilateralism. Pacific islands nations had been promised that if Australia’s bid was successful they would be co-hosts, and that there would be a significant international focus on the threat the climate crisis poses to their survival.
“Obviously, it would be great if Australia could have it all, but we can’t have it all,” Bowen said.
“This process works on consensus. And consensus means, if someone objected to our bid, it would go to [the UN climate headquarters] in Bonn. That would mean 12 months with a lack of leadership.
“That would be irresponsible for multilateralism and this challenged environment. And we didn’t want that to happen. So hence, it was important to strike an agreement with Turkey.”
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Bowen said if the deal was agreed he would be president at Cop31 and have “all the powers of Cop presidents” to manage the negotiations.
Bowen and Kurum were meeting with the rest of the Western Europe and Others Group of countries, which has responsibility for nominating next year’s host, late on Wednesday.
The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, had signalled he had changed his messaging on hosting the world’s biggest climate meeting in a press conference in Perth late on Tuesday, local time, when he said his government would not block Turkey’s bid if it was chosen.
Longtime observers at climate negotiations said Albanese’s comments on Tuesday appeared to have undermined the Australia-Pacific bid and left Bowen to sort out the details.
Murat Kurum, Turkey’s environment and climate change minister. Photograph: Pablo Porciúncula/AFP/Getty Images
The prime minister’s intervention came just hours after Bowen, the main driver of the Australian bid, declared in a public event and media interview at Cop30 that Australia was “in it to win it” on Cop31.
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The country’s position was further muddied by a statement issued by a government spokesperson a few hours after Albanese’s remarks. It said Australia had “the overwhelming support of our peers” and Turkey should not block Australia. It concluded: “But of course we will continue to negotiate with Turkey in good faith for an outcome in the best interests of the Pacific and our national interest.”
The Guardian has been told cabinet ministers later rang Pacific leaders to say the conference was likely to be in Turkey and to discuss the potential details of a deal.
Under the UN rules, Cop31 would have defaulted to the UN climate headquarters in the German city of Bonn if the standoff between Turkey and Australia had not been resolved this week. But the Germans did not want to host the negotiations, which attract tens of thousands of delegates and run alongside the world’s biggest green industry trade fair.
The Australians argued they had the declared support of at least 24 of the 28 members of the Western Europe and Others Group of countries. But they said an unprecedented deadlock that forced the event to be held in Bonn could have undermined faith in the negotiations and someone needed to broker a deal to avoid that.
Australian government sources have expressed frustration with the opaque UN decision-making process and its lack of a resolution mechanism. Australian newspapers have reported on opposition within the government to the bid, including claiming hosting Cop31 could cost taxpayers more than A$1bn.
Observers noted Albanese had not attended a year-ending climate conference since becoming prime minister and had urged him to fly to Brazil for Cop30 if he was serious about Australia’s bid.
The premier of South Australia, Peter Malinauskas, strongly supported Cop31 being held in Adelaide, the state capital, and commissioned a consultants’ report that found the event could have been worth $500m to the local economy.
