ACT
Activate • Collaborate • Transcend
We are at a critical juncture. How we act now will shape the trajectory of our world.
We live in a very challenging time, and we work in one of the most important sectors influencing the future. Yet many of us are uncertain about how to navigate our roles and decisions in ways that truly help build the world we want to live in. This is not a business-as-usual forum that is built on sharing ideas and concepts. It is a call for us to move from ideas to action, quickly and together. It is both a call and a space to reflect deeply on what is shared, and to apply it with courage and clarity in our day-to-day work.
From 28–30 September 2026, 500 leaders from across the global philanthropy community will gather in Montreal for the eighth edition of WINGSForum. This year’s WINGSForum, building on past gatherings, focuses on how we move from intention to practical action.
WINGSForum brings together philanthropy leaders, professionals, networks, experts, and changemakers from around the world. Participants represent many traditions and forms of philanthropy and contribute diverse experiences and perspectives.
In 2020, we explored the need to IMAGINE new possibilities. In 2023, we looked at how to TRANSFORM our practices and institutions, including how power, resources, and decision-making shape philanthropy. In 2026, we are turning our attention to how we ACT together to support community leaders and organisations, a more engaged and accountable philanthropy, and deeper collaboration with governments, businesses and communities so that people are better supported everywhere.
The moment
Around the world, communities are navigating profound change. Inequality, climate breakdown, environmental collapse, technological disruption and systems that do not serve people or the planet continue to shape daily realities across different contexts. Many of these challenges are rooted in long-standing imbalances of power that have excluded voices and communities for too long.
At the same time, generosity, solidarity, and collective action are growing. Across regions, organisations are testing new approaches, building partnerships, and reflecting on how philanthropy can help shift the underlying rules of the game- moving away from top‑down models toward community‑led, reciprocal ways of organising resources. Indigenous and grassroots ways of seeing and organising are already pointing the way by showing how resources, relationships, and responsibility can be reshaped—and inspiring us to act.
WINGSForum 2026 takes place at a time of both urgency and opportunity. WINGSForum is a space to understand this rapidly changing world and the role philanthropy can play, to connect experiences, learn from one another, and consider how shared action can support more equitable and sustainable societies.
The theme for this year recognises that meaningful progress requires shared commitment, steady effort, and collaboration. As philanthropic organisations, we play an important role in shaping what happens next. WINGSForum 2026 offers a space to learn from each other, reflect on our responsibilities, and identify concrete steps that can support progress in different contexts.
The experience
WINGSForum 2026 will provide a space to explore how philanthropy can move toward coordinated, courageous, and practical action, particularly in addressing root causes and shifting how power and resources are created, held, and shared. Through plenaries, workshops, learning labs, and member-led sessions, the programme will create opportunities for open and honest discussion, creative and interactive exchange, and meaningful connections. It will highlight approaches emerging across regions and communities that offer clear and practical paths forward.
This edition will invite participants to reflect on how we strengthen shared will, work together across different kinds of organisations and sectors, and contribute to the wider ecosystem – the network of people, organisations, practices, and structures that shape how philanthropy operates and contributes to society.
WINGSForum will also include opportunities for personal reflection through dedicated spaces for learning, renewal, and connection.
Theme: ACT
The theme for WINGSForum 2026 is ACT, which focuses on the real and everyday choices we make about power, resources, and alliances, and how these choices shape meaningful change. The programme is organised around three pathways that reflect different dimensions of action within philanthropy.
Activate
Exploring how philanthropy can build confidence and shared purpose, and how ideas, stories, and influence can help remove barriers to change. It places participants within today’s social, political, and geopolitical realities, encouraging reflection on where they stand, how they act, and the risks they are willing to take.
Collaborate
Focusing on how organisations and communities can work together in practice, build partnerships across different contexts, and take joint action on shared challenges, including those that no single actor can address alone. Collaborate will spotlight cross‑sector and multi‑stakeholder efforts – from cities and governments to movements and businesses – and ask how philanthropy can work with others while maintaining ambition and engaging in difficult conversations.
Transcend
Activating collective will and action, and collaborating effectively at the scale and pace needed today requires strong connections across philanthropy and beyond, including networks, community funds, ‘intermediaries’, and support systems. Ecosystems, the networks of organisations, relationships, and structures that shape how resources flow and decisions are made, are critical to unlock greater, more proximate and better resources. Recent disruptions to aid systems and civic space are making obvious their essential role for moving resources to communities, strengthening the resilience and independence of local actors, and enabling the sector to learn and respond at the pace today’s crises demand.
Drawing on Indigenous and grassroots worldviews, this pathway explores how we can transcend siloed approaches and move towards a true ecosystems approach, rooted in collective action, reciprocity, holistic impact, and accountability. These worldviews and practices are not confined to this pathway. They run throughout WINGSForum 2026, inviting philanthropy to learn from community leadership, rethink how power and responsibility are held, and act in ways that are more relational, grounded, and accountable.
Together, these pathways recognise that action begins with individual and organisational commitment and extends to the wider community that philanthropy is part of.
Join us in Montreal
Registration for WINGSForum 2026 is now open.
Supported by
WINGSForum 2026 is made possible through the generous support of our partners and funders.
