World Vaccine Congress Washington 2026

Global health governance & financing across the vaccine lifecycle

Global health leadership and governance form a core pillar of the program. In a keynote presentation, Senior Leadership from Global Health Institutions will outline how they can adapt to support regional ownership while safeguarding equitable access to vaccines.

The transition of leadership and financing from global institutions to regional and national actors is a recurring focus, with speakers tackling donor alignment, decentralization risks, and the long-term sustainability of immunization systems.

Vaccine industry perspectives

Industry leaders including Alejandro Cane (Pfizer), Temi Folaranmi (GSK), Holger Kissel (BioNTech), Jean-François Toussaint (Sanofi), and Francesca Ceddia (Moderna) will come together to discuss disease prioritization, next-generation platforms, and partnership models required to sustain innovation and access.

Plus, Rajinder Suri (DCVMN International), Petro Terblanche (Afrigen Biologics & Vaccines), Hun Kim (SK Bioscience), Rosane Cuber Guimarães (Fiocruz), and Sunil Gairola (Serum Institute of India) bring perspectives from across the Global South, including the role of AI, and the push for decentralized and regional production.

Closing the first day, a panel including Peter Hotez (Texas Children’s Hospital), Clarisse Ingabire (World Bank), and Rino Rappuoli (European Vaccine Hub) will place the vaccine field within the context of climate change, food insecurity, and antimicrobial resistance.

Pandemic preparedness platforms & broadly protective vaccines

The Pandemic Preparedness and Platforms track includes perspectives from CEPI, regulatory authorities, and public health agencies, with speakers exploring dual-use platforms, R&D gaps, regulatory bottlenecks, and scale-up challenges.

Sessions on broadly protective and next-generation vaccines address scientific and economic barriers to developing durable protection against coronaviruses and other respiratory pathogens. Contributions from Kayvon Modjarrad (Pfizer), Mandeep Singh Dhingra (CEPI), and Derek Fleming (CIDRAP) will examine target product profiles, correlates of protection, and funding mechanisms required to sustain long-term investment.

A plenary panel on pandemic-proofing health systems features panelists including Nicole Lurie (CEPI), and Thomas Waite (UKHSA) examining cross-border coordination and the role of real-world data in future outbreak response.

Threats new & old

A panel on tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV will feature contributions from Seth Berkley (Brown University), Richard White (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine), Deborah Atherly (PATH), and Kara Bickham (IAVI). The discussion assesses vaccine pipeline progress, implementation readiness, and the positioning of these diseases within broader global health security strategies.

The emerging and re-emerging Diseases track focuses on vaccine development strategies for chikungunya, mpox, malaria, Nipah virus, and cytomegalovirus, alongside discussions on genomic surveillance and real-time variant tracking.

A dedicated panel on climate change and infectious disease risk brings together voices from global health organizations and research institutions to consider how climate data and disease modeling can inform vaccine prioritization and preparedness planning.

Dedicated sessions on influenza and respiratory vaccines dive into strain selection, combination vaccine strategies, and the ongoing challenge of aligning seasonal immunization schedules across geographies.

Meanwhile, the Veterinary Vaccines track highlights One Health approaches to zoonotic disease prevention and climate-linked risks.

Immune profiling, correlates of protection, & immunobridging

The Immune Profiling track brings together immunologists and translational scientists to discuss how advanced immune-profiling tools are reshaping vaccine development and regulatory decision-making. Topics covered include high-resolution antibody profiling, longitudinal immune studies, and defining correlates of protection for pathogens including mpox, malaria, and emerging viral threats.

There is also a focus on immunobridging as a mechanism for accelerating vaccine access, with speakers including Marion Gruber (IAVI) and Anna Honko (CEPI) examining regulatory precedent, assay standardization, and the scientific limitations of extrapolating immune data across populations and platforms.

Evolving role of vaccines in cancer immunotherapy

The Cancer and Immunotherapy Vaccines track explores how the role of vaccination in oncology is evolving. Sessions present strategies to induce robust cytotoxic T cell responses without viral vectors, optimize lipid nanoparticle and nucleic acid delivery systems, and integrate cancer vaccines with checkpoint inhibitors and other immunotherapies.

Senior academic and translational leaders, including David B. Weiner (The Wistar Institute), Simon Van Haren (Harvard Medical School), Peter Demuth (Elicio Therapeutics), and Kyle Holen (Moderna), will discuss progress from bench to bedside.

Clinical development & safety

The Clinical Development and Trials track looks at how trial design and regulatory flexibility are evolving in response to emerging threats. Sessions explore decentralized trials, recruitment strategies, and the growing role of human challenge models in accelerating efficacy assessment. Representatives from CEPI, IVI, and national regulatory agencies assess ethical considerations, infrastructure requirements, and the integration of immunobridging data into licensure pathways.

The Vaccine Safety track focuses on safety science across development and post-licensure surveillance, including observational data, pharmacovigilance frameworks, and communication challenges in an increasingly fragmented policy environment.

Manufacturing & supply chains

The Bioprocessing and Manufacturing track presents innovations across formulation, fill and finish, adjuvants, and mRNA production, alongside strategies for sustainable and regionally distributed manufacturing. Senior experts from academia, pharma, and international manufacturing networks will address regulatory alignment, quality control, and the integration of digital and AI-enabled manufacturing tools.

Parallel discussions within the Supply and Logistics track focus on vaccine distribution, cold chain resilience, and domestic manufacturing strategies, with particular attention to lessons learned from COVID-19 and their implications for future health security planning.

Politics & policy

The conference is bookended by reflections on the current political landscape for vaccines. The program opens with a fireside chat with senior US HHS officials on federal priorities for infectious disease research, pandemic preparedness, and regulatory reform.

Meanwhile, the closing session examines how political change and policy uncertainty are reshaping vaccine markets and offers a forward-looking perspective on how pharma, nonprofits, clinicians and regulators can navigate an evolving policy environment.

Overall, the program points to a growing emphasis on the intersection of scientific innovation, policy decisions, and delivery constraints across the vaccine lifecycle.

Further details on the program and registration are available here.

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