COP17 closed in Yerevan on Saturday 31 October 2026 after an all-night final session, with the main texts adopted and no part sent to a resumed COP17 session (open work goes to COP18 in Ecuador); the cbd.int page had no closing report yet, so UN News and The Guardian settle it.
History. Of seven past summits of this kind with no break planned at the start, six closed with all their decisions by the day after the last planned day. Cali in 2024 did not.
Hunch. The last summit like this, in Cali in November 2024, lost the countries it needed to take decisions after almost 12 extra hours of talks.
The summit market resolves on the COP17 page and report on cbd.int: YES if the chair declares COP17 closed by 23:59 on 31 October 2026, Yerevan time, and no item, the budget included, is moved to a resumed session of COP17, and NO if talks are suspended with items moved or the summit is still open. Work handed to the treaty's expert bodies for later years does not count as moving an item, and The Guardian and UN News settle it if cbd.int is silent.
We looked for cases where countries in the UN treaty on nature met for a regular summit to check progress on targets they had already agreed, not to agree new ones. We found eight such summits since 2004. The four since 2014 ran alongside meetings of related treaties, as COP17 does.