FUNDERS 
FORUM
2026 EDITIONS

Senior leaders from philanthropy, public institutions, science, venture philanthropy, impact investment, and long term capital will convene for a focused dialogue on how priorities, risks, and opportunities across ocean systems can be more effectively aligned.

The discussion will centre on strategically important European and global bioregions, as well as thematic priorities such as ocean observation, biodiversity, and related system enablers. It will examine where capital and prioritiey pathways converge across public policy, philanthropy, and private investment, and where fragmentation across instruments and actors continues to limit scale, coherence, and continuity.

The session is designed to support shared orientation and structured learning rather than immediate decisions. Participants will explore how different forms of capital — grants, catalytic capital, venture and growth investment, guarantees, and blended structures — can identify opportunity, value and impact, whether independently or in coordinated constellations; what prevents promising initiatives from progressing, scaling, or being replicated; and what forms of coordination, intelligence, and sequencing could materially improve outcomes.

The dialogue will also consider how insights from the exchange can inform more coherent approaches to portfolio design, capital stacking, matched funding, syndicated models, and other structured deployment and capital design, as well as potential coordinated actions across the 2026 cycle and beyond towards validated use cases. 

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Outcomes:

1. Learning Outcome

2. Architecture Outcome

3. Capital and Funding Design Outcome