World

COP31 opens Monday in Antalya as nearly 200 nations gather — with the U.S. absent and the 1.5C goal already breached

Antalya, Türkiye • November 8, 2026 • By Press Pass USA

Antalya's old harbor on the Mediterranean coast, host city of the COP31 climate summit

Photo: The Pinnacle List

Delegates from more than 190 countries are gathering in Antalya, Türkiye, for COP31, the United Nations climate summit that opens Monday, November 9, 2026 — the first since the United States formally withdrew from the Paris Agreement, and the first held after the world breached the agreement's 1.5-degree warming limit.

The summit, the 31st Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, runs from November 9 to 20 at the Antalya Expo Center on Türkiye's Mediterranean coast. Tens of thousands of delegates, ministers, scientists and activists are expected for two weeks of negotiations on cutting emissions, paying for climate damage already done and helping poorer nations adapt.

The meeting carries an unusual arrangement at the top. Türkiye is hosting the talks, but Australia will preside over the formal negotiations, under a compromise reached after both countries competed for the presidency. Türkiye's environment minister, Murat Kurum, holds the COP31 presidency and leads the action agenda of voluntary efforts, while Australia's climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, serves as president of negotiations.

The United States will be absent for a second year in a row. President Donald Trump removed the world's largest economy from the Paris Agreement for a second time, with the withdrawal taking effect in January 2026, and has begun the process of withdrawing the U.S. from the underlying climate convention. The nation will have no official delegation at the talks, though members of Congress, businesspeople and civil society groups are expected to attend.

The summit opens against a stark scientific backdrop. The United Nations has warned that the world is all but certain to blow past the Paris Agreement's target of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and the U.N. Environment Programme said countries will need drastically steeper emissions cuts just to minimize the overshoot. The U.N. argues that rapid action could still limit how far temperatures overshoot the target and allow a return to lower temperatures by the end of this century.

Rather than new headline pledges, this year's summit will focus on implementation — above all, electrification. Türkiye has put forward a pledge to raise electricity's share of global final energy consumption to 35 percent by 2035, up from about 23 percent today, on the argument that electric technology is far more efficient than burning fuel. Watch, too, for commitments on methane: France has proposed cutting emissions of the potent greenhouse gas by 75 percent by 2035, according to a draft paper seen by Bloomberg.

Finance will be the hardest fight, as it is at every COP. Developed nations are on the hook to deliver at least $300 billion a year to developing countries by 2035, and negotiators are expected to debate tripling adaptation finance, a goal added late at last year's talks. Developing countries arrive in Antalya struggling to cope with floods, droughts and other climate impacts, and short of the means to adapt. Small island states, the countries most exposed to rising seas, are pushing to make sure the 1.5C goal is not abandoned. "There can be no waffling about 1.5°C," Ilana Seid, chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, said in a statement.

Two roadmaps drawn up by Brazil will also be central to the discussion: one sets out a path for moving away from fossil fuels, the other for halting deforestation by 2030. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who won re-election last month, is expected to attend — his first international visit since the vote — alongside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, among a modest contingent of world leaders. The leaders' summit is scheduled for November 11 and 12. COP31 will also lay the foundation for the next Global Stocktake, the Paris Agreement's formal review of collective progress, due to conclude at COP33 in 2028.

Sources: The Guardian, "Climate summit opens in Turkey as world weighs fossil fuel exit" (Nov. 8, 2026); The Hindu Business Line, "What to Watch at COP31 as Midterms, Brazil Deliver Climate Boost" (Nov. 8, 2026). Event date verified: COP31, the 31st U.N. climate conference, opens Monday, November 9, 2026, in Antalya, Türkiye, and runs through November 20, 2026.