The International Telecommunication Union holds its Plenipotentiary Conference PP-26 in Doha from 9 to 27 November 2026 at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Center, hosted by the State of Qatar through the Communications Regulatory Authority of Qatar. The conference is the supreme decision-making body of the ITU and meets every four years.
The Plenipotentiary sets the union's strategic and financial plans for the following four-year period, elects its secretary-general, deputy secretary-general, the directors of its three bureaux and the members of its Radio Regulations Board and Council, and adopts the resolutions that guide global cooperation on spectrum, standards and telecommunications development. Delegations from the ITU's member states attend at ministerial and regulator level, and sector members from the telecommunications and technology industry participate as observers.
The Doha conference matters to executives because the decisions taken shape the regulatory and standards environment in which telecommunications operators, satellite companies, equipment manufacturers and technology platforms operate worldwide. The leadership elections determine who will steer the union through the next cycle of debates on spectrum allocation for mobile and satellite services, the governance of emerging technologies, and the digital development agenda in emerging markets. Industry participation is concentrated around the opening days and the election week.
The conference is also significant for the Gulf, which last hosted the Plenipotentiary in Dubai in 2018. Its return to the region confirms the Gulf's growing role in international digital governance and runs alongside GSMA MWC26 Doha, the mobile industry's Middle East event, which takes place at the same venue during the opening days of the conference and brings the commercial side of the industry to the city at the same time.
For chief executives and regulatory affairs leaders at telecommunications operators, satellite and spectrum-dependent businesses, network equipment vendors and the large technology platforms whose services depend on international connectivity policy, PP-26 is the principal multilateral telecommunications event of the four-year cycle. Regional operators and regulators from across the Middle East and Africa are expected to be heavily represented in Doha.
Details of accreditation and the programme are published by the ITU and the Qatari host authority.
