Latam Summit 2026…

The Latam Summit 2026 is a space for dialogue and exchange of ideas about the challenges and opportunities facing the Latin American region in a context of global order reconfiguration.

LATAM is re-emerging in multiple strategic debates in an environment marked by geopolitical tensions, the transition of the global energy matrix, the proliferation of technologies such as artificial intelligence, protectionism and trade relocation, anti-immigration policies, the weakening of multilateral and international institutions, and state capture by illegal economies.

This position stems from the fact that the region concentrates critical resources that make it a contested space among major powers. However, the region faces these tensions from a position of vulnerability: a historical dependence on external markets, foreign technology, and investment; a private sector whose transformative potential has not managed to align with regional development priorities; and internal institutions with limited capacity to manage pressures of this magnitude. As a result, Latin America has yet to fully leverage its strategic weight or translate it into a collective voice capable of influencing the decisions that affect it.

This is not the first time the region has occupied a central place in international markets. Cycles of high resource demand are as recurring in Latin America as the absence of a joint structural transformation strategy capable of generating inclusive growth or reducing inequalities. Integration into global production chains has tended to reproduce a primary-export logic, without generating added value or broadly distributing its benefits — with the persistence of inequality being the clearest evidence of this. The risk today is that the new cycle of strategic demand will repeat or exacerbate these patterns.

Faced with this new global conjuncture, a double question arises: what should Latin America's role be in the face of global reconfiguration? And, more importantly, what conditions would allow that role to evolve toward a strategic insertion that generates structural transformation rather than reproducing dependency or deepening intra- and interregional gaps? The 3rd edition of the Latin American Summit 2026 seeks to answer these questions over two days. The first day examines the region's role in the emerging order — from its strategic resources and geopolitical positioning to the architecture of its international integration and the human dimension of mobility. The second day focuses on the internal conditions that would make a genuine strategic insertion possible: the institutional design of the state, social policy as a redistributive instrument, and the role of the private sector as an agent of transformation. 

The Summit will consist of a series of discussion panels with specialists, researchers and (former) public servants, and policy workshops in which attendees will take part in a collective drafting of potential policy solutions for each topic discussed in the panels. 

Objectives

● Analyse Latin America's current role in the context of the new global order.

● Explore the conditions that would allow the region to strategically position itself to add value and achieve inclusive growth.

● Discuss the risks of reproducing inequalities, dependency, and lack of representation.

● Generate analytical frameworks and potential policy solutions useful for students, academics, and future leaders of the region. 

Agenda

May, Friday 8th

10:00 - 11:30 Panel 1: Strategic Resources

• Osmel Manzano, Regional Economic Advisor, Inter-American Development Bank
• Luis Miguel Castilla, Former Peruvian Minister of Finance and Economic, Visiting Senior Fellow of the School of Public Policy, LSE
• Marcelo Esquivel, Vice President of Communication at Anglo American

Chair: Kathryn Hochstetler, Professor of International Development at the Department of International Development, LSE

12:00 - 13:30 Panel 2: Institutional Capacity

• Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos, Director of the Brazil Institute at the School of Global Affairs at King’s College London and Associate Professor in Brazil and Latin American Studies.
• Javier Sajuria, Professor of Comparative Politics at Queen Mary University of London
• Bruce Mc Master, Director of the National Association of Entrepreneurs (ANDI) of Colombia

Chair: Maria Sol Parrales Lopez, Fellow in International Political Economy at the Department of International Relations at LSE  

12:00 - 13:30 Panel 3: Migration

• Mauricio Palma Gutiérrez, Researcher of International Migration at the Faculty of Politics and International Studies at Del Rosario University (Bogotá, Colombia) 

Chair: TBC

14:30 - 16:00 Workshop 1: Strategic Resources

Student-led

May, Saturday 9th

10:00 - 11:30 Panel 4: Inequalities

• Felipe González, Professor at the Economic Department at King's College. 
• María Valentina Gabrielli, PhD candidate at the Paris School of Economics working on Intergenerational Mobility in Latin America. 

Chair: Francisco Chico Ferreira, Director of the International Inequalities Institute at LSE

10:00 - 11:30 Workshop 2: Institutional Capacities

Student-led

12:00 - 13:30 Workshop 3: Migration

Student-led

12:00 - 13:30 Workshop 4: Inequalities

Student-led