Do Trust and Transparency Still Matter? Launch of the 2026 Aid Transparency Index

Join Publish What You Fund and the Center for Global Development to hear the headline findings and themes from the 2026 Aid Transparency Index, the leading global assessment of the transparency of major aid and development organisations, and take part in a timely discussion about the future of trust, transparency and evidence in development decision-making.

The 2026 Index comes at a critical moment. With development cooperation under pressure from rising global need, constrained aid budgets, geopolitical fragmentation, and increasing scrutiny of the effectiveness and legitimacy of international financing, does transparency still matter? What role does reliable, comparable, and accessible data play in sustaining trust, supporting public confidence, and enabling better decisions about where scarce resources should go? The discussion will consider what the changing politics of aid means for transparency—including the implications of shuttering USAID in 2025.

We’ll bring together perspectives from civil society, partner-country governments and development agencies to ask how transparency can strengthen coordination, accountability and learning; whether partner countries have the information they need; and what we really know about where development resources are going and what they achieve.

Whether you publish aid data, fund development programmes, shape policy, conduct research or use development finance data to hold institutions to account, this conversation is for you.

Keynote speaker

Dr Sidi Ould Tah, President, African Development Bank

Presenter

Gary Forster, CEO, Publish What You Fund

Speakers

TBC

Moderator

Ian Mitchell, Co-Director, Europe and Senior Fellow, CGD