When a community meets regularly enough, the conversation shifts, almost imperceptibly, from what we want to do to what we are actually doing: quite literally from ambition to action.
The 2026 All-Atlantic Ocean Research and Innovation Alliance (AAORIA) Forum in Salvador da Bahia was that kind of moment: hosted by the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI) at SENAI CIMATEC on 15–16 April 2026, this event has been a long time in the making. The All-Atlantic community has been gathering for years during its annual Fora, building the trust and architecture that makes ambitious ocean science diplomacy and cooperation possible. This event marked the third consecutive AAORIA Forum – after Ottawa in 2024 and Brussels in 2025 – that was supported through the EU-funded OKEANO Coordination and Support Action (CSA), of which JPI Oceans is a main partner. Over the last three years, JPI Oceans has helped tell the Alliance's story, connect its people, and helped advance Atlantic research and innovation.
The OKEANO CSA, running from 2024 to early 2027, brings together 17 Atlantic partners to support AAORIA and the implementation of the All-Atlantic Declaration, turning high-level political commitments into on-the-ground activities. Within that, JPI Oceans holds responsibilities that are different in character but complementary in practice: leading communications, organising the intergenerational dialogues, and exploring the feasibility of a future All-Atlantic joint call. Coordinated, transnational research funding is notoriously difficult to get right, from incentives pulling in different directions and timelines rarely aligning. In the face of these adversities, JPI Oceans has successfully built such a joint call model. Bringing that experience to bear on an Atlantic-wide call is work that could go beyond the OKEANO timeframe. It also sits squarely within JPI Oceans' broader internationalisation aspiration: extending the reach and relevance of coordinated ocean research funding beyond Europe, and helping to build the kind of durable, multilateral science infrastructure that the Atlantic genuinely needs.
When JPI Oceans co-organised the first OKEANO-supported Intergenerational Dialogue in Ottawa in 2024, the format was relatively new: bringing Early Career Ocean Professionals (ECOPs) and senior experts into the same room and giving them a set of recommendations to develop – intergenerationally – in the form of a short pitch to be presented at the Forum plenary session, and then as a policy brief for the attention of the AAORIA High Level Board.
Brussels in 2025 expanded the scope, with ECOPs and mentors involved in the second Intergenerational Dialogue tackling all seven priorities of the All-Atlantic Declaration and visiting the European Parliament, as well as assisting to the launch of the All-Atlantic Blue Intergenerational Programme in the plenary session.
In 2026, we asked a different question entirely. Not "what do you recommend?" but "here’s a problem, which approaches would you take to address it?"
And so the first All-Atlantic Intergenerational Hackathon was born. Over 24 hours, 65 ECOPs worked alongside mid- and late-career ocean professionals across six thematic challenges to deliver a set of solutions. This Hackathon, organised by IFREMER in collaboration with JPI Oceans, the Marine Institute and Sigi Gruber, produced working prototypes rather than presentations, tools and frameworks designed to be deployed. Teams first presented their prototype to a selected jury panel, which chose the group working on fisheries as the overall winner, then to the plenary, with the team working on Low-Cost Sensors for ocean observing ultimately bringing home the “crowd favourite” title.
Beyond the Intergenerational Hackathon, JPI Oceans was present across the Forum in ways that reflect where the organisation is heading as much as where it has been.
The presentation of the JPI Oceans Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) Joint Action was a case in point. Understanding the state and trajectory of the AMOC and what its changes mean for ecosystems, climate, and societies, requires sustained ocean observing and transnational scientific collaboration. The AMOC Joint Action is JPI Oceans' contribution to the AAORIA priority on ocean observation and modelling, led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).Sharing this Joint Action at an All-Atlantic Forum is the kind of international stage where the work can unfold basin-wide policy impacts.
The communications role, meanwhile, was all encompassing. During the Forum week, JPI Oceans provided live coverage across social media channels, conducted interviews with the Hackathon participants, and made sure that what was happening in Salvador reached audiences well beyond the room. Short clips and podcast content will follow, so make sure to head to the All-Atlantic website and social media for the latest updates.
Beyond JPI Oceans’ role in the Forum, the whole OKEANO consortium was just as busy.
The coastal resilience sessions were notable for centring lived experiences, including testimony from Erica Silva dos Santos, a fisherwoman from the community of Siribinha who survived an oil spill. "Nothing about us without us" was the thread running through those discussions. The Coastal Resilience Beacon Sites Network now spans 27 sites across 19 countries. A new EUR 6 million Horizon Europe project on coastal resilience and climate adaptation will launch later this year. Brazil has recently become the first country to embed ocean literacy in its national curriculum. New areas of action emerged around Marine Spatial Planning, food web modelling, and large-scale experimental research to validate ocean and climate models.
The Forum also confirmed that the United Kingdom will chair AAORIA next year and host the next All-Atlantic Forum 2027, a milestone year marking five years since the All-Atlantic Declaration was signed in 2022.
The AAORIA community has been building something, Forum by Forum, for longer than OKEANO has existed, and longer than it will. What the last three editions have added is a more deliberate investment in the people who will carry this work forward, and a clearer sense that early-career professionals are not the future of ocean governance but a rather important part of the present.
JPI Oceans continues supporting the Alliance through OKEANO: advancing the case for an All-Atlantic Joint Call, building upon intergenerational efforts, and making sure that what happens in these rooms reaches the people it needs to reach through sound communication. The JPI Oceans internationalisation agenda running through all of this, connecting European research funding culture with the broader Atlantic community and building lasting partnerships across the basin, does not wrap up with the Forum, it compounds.
Obrigada, Salvador. Next stop: UK 2027.
For The full Summary of Outcomes from the 2026 Forum, recordings of the sessions and further information on AAORIA's initiatives, visit https://allatlanticocean.org/.