INTERPOL Global Biosecurity Conference 2026

As biological threats grow more complex — spanning non-state actors, emerging biotechnologies, and increasingly porous borders — the need for coordinated international action across law enforcement, public health, and scientific communities has never been more pressing. A major international conference next autumn will bring these communities together to confront that challenge directly.

INTERPOL’s Bioterrorism Prevention Unit will host the 2nd INTERPOL Global Biosecurity Conference from 3–5 November 2026 at INTERPOL Headquarters in Lyon, France. The three-day conference will convene law enforcement and partner agencies, biosecurity experts, and academics from multiple regions and professional backgrounds to examine the current biological threat landscape and advance practical, actionable responses.

The conference is designed to serve as an international forum for dialogue across sectors — including health, customs, civil protection, the scientific community, policy-makers, and the private sector — with a shared focus on strengthening biosecurity at the global level. Specific objectives include exploring current and emerging biological threats relevant to law enforcement, sharing good practices in prevention, preparedness, and incident response, and defining concrete actions to address recommendations developed during the conference. The event builds on the inaugural Global Biosecurity Conference held in 2024.

For professionals working at the intersection of public health security, biosecurity, and global health governance, this conference offers a rare opportunity to engage directly with law enforcement perspectives on biological threats — an increasingly critical dimension of biosecurity that extends well beyond traditional public health frameworks. Sessions will address topics ranging from early-warning systems and border biosecurity to forensic investigation of biological incidents and the dual-use risks posed by emerging technologies such as synthetic biology and AI-driven protein design.

Highlighted sessions of interest include:

• Global biological threat landscape — Mapping the evolving landscape of non-state actors seeking to acquire, produce, or use biological agents and toxins as weapons, including analysis of operational methods, technical capabilities, and access to open-source knowledge
• Indicators and early-warning for biological threats — Showcasing integrated intelligence frameworks combining health, customs, laboratory, cyber, and human intelligence to enhance detection, including tools for real-time data aggregation and proactive biosecurity response
• Health and law enforcement coordination when responding to a biological incident — Examining inter-agency decision-making, joint command structures, and coordination mechanisms during suspected biological incidents, including gaps and solutions for a One Health approach
• Forensic examination of bio-contaminated evidence — Outlining procedures for safe evidence preservation and presenting innovative forensic techniques for identification, attribution, and source tracing of biological agents or toxins used in deliberate incidents
• Biosecurity at borders — Examining integrated border control systems combining customs, veterinary, public health, and law enforcement functions to detect illicit biological flows, and discussing challenges in identifying dual-use commodities related to biological weapons
• Science, technology, and innovation: emerging challenges and dual-use risks to biosecurity — Identifying high-risk dual-use technologies including gene editing, synthetic biology, and AI-driven protein design, and proposing proactive risk mitigation strategies and responsible innovation frameworks
• Science, technology, and innovation: opportunities for law enforcement — Demonstrating how technologies such as portable sequencing, AI-powered diagnostics, and rapid biosensors are transforming field detection and situational awareness, with case studies of technology-enabled investigations
• Moving forward legal, policy, and information-sharing enablers for biosecurity — Examining legal and policy frameworks that facilitate cross-sector and international cooperation, and identifying practical challenges and good practices in information-sharing, evidence exchange, and mutual assistance in the biosecurity context

For more information, please visit INTERPOL’s Global partnerships against bioterrorism website.