Eduardo González
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, will receive this Wednesday the Ibero-American Secretary General (SEGIB), Andrés Allamand, and the Ibero-American ambassadors accredited in Spain, with whom he will discuss, among other matters, the XXX Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government, which will take place in Spain in 2026.
The meeting will take place at the ministerial headquarters of the Viana Palace in Madrid and will serve, among other objectives, to discuss the preparations for the 2026 Ibero-American Summit, according to diplomatic sources reported to The Diplomat.
Spain was unanimously chosen as the host of the next Summit. During the next two years it will be in charge of organizing the Ibero-American ministerial conferences, as well as the meetings of foreign ministers and national coordinators and other preparatory forums and meetings. According to a press release from the Foreign Ministry, the “most general” objective of the 2026 Ibero-American Summit will be the “synchronization” of the Summit system with “the needs, expectations and challenges of the present and the immediate future of Ibero-America, which would be structured around three axes: political, thematic and institutional.”
To date, Spain has hosted three Ibero-American Summits. Madrid hosted the second, in July 1992, in the midst of the fifth centenary of the Discovery of America. In addition, Salamanca celebrated the fifteenth in October 2005 and Cadiz hosted the twenty-second in November 2012, coinciding with the bicentennial of the Constitution of 1812, drafted in this city.
The Ibero-American Summits are part of a political coordination mechanism that brings together the 22 Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries of Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula, including Portugal, Andorra and Spain. At them, heads of state and government debate and work on an agenda based on common interests.
The previous summit, held in Cuenca (Ecuador) in mid-November 2024, was characterized, above all, by the absence of all the presidents of the region, with the exception of the host, the Ecuadorian Daniel Noboa. As heads of state, only the European leaders attended: Felipe VI of Spain, the president of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and the head of government of Andorra, Xavier Espot. The King was accompanied by José Manuel Albares, who participated as the highest representative of the Government after President Pedro Sánchez cancelled his attendance to closely follow the DANA crisis in Valencia.
