Protecting progress: our key priorities for 2026

2025 was a challenging year for Frontline AIDS and our partners, for people living with and affected by HIV and for the wider global health community. Civil society organisations and communities who rely on consistent access to HIV treatment and care are operating in an increasingly volatile and hostile environment shaped by funding cuts, attacks on human rights and civic space and growing uncertainty around multilateral cooperation, including news that the United States intends to withdraw from the UN and other multilateral bodies.

The coming year will be a vital one. Our leaders set out their key priorities for 2026.

John Plastow, Executive Director 

Strategic leadership in a changing global landscape 

2026 must be the year we fight back in the interests of communities most affected by HIV.  As one of the world’s largest partnerships of civil society organisations working to end AIDS, we need to be in the vanguard constructing new solutions to rapidly evolving challenges. 

This is a year when we need to be on the front foot — assertive, creative and focused.

Working with our partners to build strong and synergistic working relationships with national governments is a critical first step, wherever this is possible. Where the interests of the communities we work with are not being addressed by national actors, we must find robust ways to collaborate with other civil society actors, the private sector and philanthropic organisations. We will also explore new channels to protect rights and safeguard life-saving services in crisis settings, with a focus on the people who are often the first to lose access when systems fail.   

This is a year when we need to be on the front foot: assertive, creative and focused. In 2026, we will launch our new strategy, developed in close association with our partners.  This strategy will be our springboard to developing more sustainable HIV responses with governments and civil society and ensuring that the interests and rights of marginalised communities are championed and protected.    

Revati Chawla, Interim Head of Programmes  

Supporting community leadership for lasting impact 

For our strategy to deliver meaningful change, programmes must be effective and rooted in community leadership. As we move forward, we will focus on ensuring the right resourcing, systems, and clarity are in place, while moving the management and delivery of programmes closer to the point of impact and placing greater decision-making power in the hands of the communities we exist to serve. 

Ending programmes well is as important as delivering them. 

As we begin implementing our new strategy, it is also important to acknowledge the funding pressures shaping the current context. Like many organisations and partners across the sector, Frontline AIDS is experiencing the impact of funding cuts, and the end of the previous strategic period has seen the closure of some of our programmes. 

This includes the REACh human rights portfolio, which concludes this year after combining emergency response for communities affected by human rights crises with longer-term investment in human rights monitoring and advocacy. Ending programmes well is as important as delivering them, and we remain committed to doing so in a way that is accountable to partners, communities, and funders. 

Alongside this, I will oversee the final years of implementation of two of our largest grants: the READY programme, which works with young people across six countries in sub-Saharan Africa to strengthen HIV prevention and rights-based responses; and our community-led harm reduction programme, which explores innovative approaches to reducing new hepatitis C and HIV infections among people who use drugs in Egypt, Kyrgyzstan, and Nigeria. 

Joannah Davis, Head of Funding and Partnerships 

Financing resilient, community-led responses 

In 2026, we will act with renewed urgency to resource the critical work of communities, who are often operating with limited funding in highly restrictive environments. We’ll deepen existing partnerships and catalyse new collaborations related to protecting human rights, respond to crises and climate change, and integrate HIV and related co-infections into wider health systems.  

Working alongside our partners, we’ll explore new funding and financing mechanisms, broker opportunities, and unlock resources in ways that strengthen community-led responses. 

Frontline AIDS will also bring community voices and evidence on what is needed into international and regional dialogues on sustainable financing for health. In 2026, we will engage more deeply in the Accra Reset process, an initiative led by Ghana’s president that calls on African leaders to rethink global health responses and invest more strongly in nationally led health strategies, in the context of declining foreign aid. The World Health Summit Regional meeting in Nairobi and the 79th World Health Assembly will also be critical opportunities to ensure that the realities facing communities shape global decision-making and investment priorities. 

Paul Sagna, Acting Head of Partnerships 

Strengthening collective action through partnership 

The Frontline AIDS partnership brings together community and civil society organisations working in diverse contexts, and its strength directly affects our collective ability to respond effectively to challenges and sustain community-led responses. 

A key priority in 2026 will be reinforcing the foundations that enable partners to engage confidently and contribute fully. We’ll review key partnership documents to clarify roles and responsibilities, strengthen partner ownership of the strategy and ensure partners are well-positioned to deliver on our shared priorities. 

At the same time, our partnership must evolve. We will expand our reach to civil society actors whose mission and vision align with our strategy, helping to strengthen collective influence and resilience across the HIV response. This will be done in a coordinated and transparent manner, grounded in the principles that underpin our partnership. 

The 13th International Francophone Conference on HIV, Hepatitis and Emerging Infections (AFRAVIH) in Lausanne and AIDS 2026 in Rio de Janeiro will bring together key actors in the global HIV response. Our partners will be mobilising to participate in these events, and we’ll explore how we can best support their engagement and collective impact. 

Fionnuala Murphy, Head of Global Advocacy 

Standing up for rights and centring care in a year of transition 

This year we’ll expand our work empowering community and civil society partners to shape the transition to sustainable, nationally-led HIV and health systems. Building on the Transition Initiative we launched in 2025, we will focus strongly on financing, but also on integrating community- and youth-led HIV services into health systems and promoting community-led models that link HIV with other health areas. 

If we care — for ourselves, our partners and communities — we will be stronger together.

We’ll also continue our leadership on human rights and gender justice. Working closely with partners, we’ll counter rising anti-rights mobilisation and define the next phase of our Rapid Response Fund, which has so far issued over 600 grants to community organisations supporting the health and rights of marginalised people. 

2026 will also be a year of upheaval in the global system. Attacks on multilateralism, and the UN80 initiative, are already reshaping the UN architecture.  We’re committed to ensuring a strong and coordinated voice for our partnership in debates on UN reform, particularly the threatened closure of UNAIDS, and in the upcoming and critically important UN High-Level Meeting on AIDS. 

We bid farewell to 2025 and the shocks it brought knowing how much there is to do in 2026.  Yet it’s also my hope that we can centre care in our efforts this year.  The challenges are many, but if we care — for ourselves, our colleagues, our partners and most importantly the communities that we work with — we will be stronger together, and better equipped to achieve our goal of ending AIDS.