News Published: 12 March 2026

BGCI in collaboration with the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) and all GCC partner gardens are holding the first GCC Summit in May 2026

The inaugural GCC Summit will take place in May 2026. This event will bring together consortium partners to share best practice and co-develop the next-generation GCC framework to strengthen collaboration, data optimisation, technology innovation, improve conservation monitoring and grow ex situ & in situ conservation impacts world-wide. This will help solidify this invaluable network and help increase collective plant conservation efforts.

About the Global Conservation Consortia: the GCCs aim to mobilise a coordinated network of institutions and experts to collaboratively develop and implement comprehensive conservation strategies for priority threatened plant groups.

BGCI acts as the global secretariat for the Global Conservation Consortia and coordinates this programme, currently made up of 12 GCCs. The GCC programme has regional lead partners on all continents (excluding Antarctica) and a community of local partners in more than 30 countries. This is truly a global effort!  Since launch, the programme has grown to include more than 2k threatened plant species and will continue to expand with new partnerships and by expanding to include additional important plant groups. Additionally, BGCI will announce the formation of two new GCCs at the Summit in May – so watch this space.

Collaborators: This meeting is made possible through a partnership between BGCI, BGCI-US, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh & The Franklinia Foundation in collaboration with GCC lead institutions including the Atlanta Botanic Garden, Montgomery Botanical Center, The Morton Arboretum, New York Botanical Garden, Royal Botanic Garden Kew-Wakehurst, Westonbirt-The National Arboretum / Forestry England, University of Bergen, United States Botanic Garden and Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (Chinese Academy of Sciences).

Financial support is being provided by BGCI, RBGE, Foundation Franklina, The Huntington and the New Phytologist Foundation.