International Sustainability Transitions Conference Hope – In challenging times

Date: 31 August – 2 September 2026

Location: Zurich, Switzerland

The conference will be held at ETH Zurich on 31^st August – 2^nd September, hosted by the transitions and innovation research group Cirus at Eawag and the Group for Sustainability and Technology at ETH.

The conference theme is ‘Hope—in challenging times’, and invites transition scholars from around the world to engage with ideas that foster hope.

Hope that through our individual and collective work, environmental sustainability and social justice can be cultivated – even in times marked by armed conflicts, political polarisation, and mounting planetary crises. What hopeful storylines can we draw from transitions scholarship, and how can we mobilise them to transform socio-technical systems that better serve humanity and the planet?

The IST conference is the flagship event for the international transitions research community, hosted each year on behalf of the Sustainability Transitions Research Network (STRN). STRN connects more than two thousand researchers from diverse fields worldwide. The conference draws more than 500 researchers from over 30 countries, fostering debate on cutting-edge research on socio-technical transformations within and across multiple systems.

Find details about key dates here.