As stakeholders gather for this year's Annual Meetings of the IMF and World Bank held in Bangkok, CGD is hosting important discussions with leading global development experts, policymakers, representatives from international finance institutions, and more. Learn more about our schedule of events and sign up below.
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Last updated: September 30, 2026
Upcoming Events
Bangkok 2026: What We’re Watching at the World Bank/IMF Annual Meetings
Wednesday, October 7, 2026, 9:00 pm - 10:00 pm ICT / 10:00 am - 11:00 am EDT / 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm BST | Online
Ahead of the World Bank/IMF Annual Meetings in Bangkok, Devex will sit down with experts from the Center for Global Development to hear what they’ll be watching—and why. With aid budgets shrinking, debt pressures mounting, and a volatile global economy putting new pressure on developing countries, the stakes are high. The conversation will look at the choices facing the Bank, Fund, and their shareholders—from jobs and development finance to debt and responding to global shocks—and what those choices could mean for developing countries.
A New Era of Multilateralism: China’s Evolving Role
Wednesday, October 14, 2026, 3:00 pm - 4:15 pm ICT / 4:00 am - 5:15 am EDT / 9:00 am - 10:15 am BST | In Bangkok and Online
This session will present new CGD research mapping China's engagement across the multilateral development banks, the vertical funds and the UN system — the first comprehensive update to the landmark 2021 CGD study led by Scott Morris in five years — and will use it as a shared factual baseline for a panel discussion bringing together Chinese and non-Chinese perspectives. The aim is to explore what China's shifting willingness and ability to contribute mean for burden-sharing and governance reform, including for replenishments, the reform of voice and shareholding, and the future financing of a system under fiscal strain. Convening this conversation in Bangkok offers a rare opportunity for genuine dialogue with China on its multilateral role, rather than a Western conversation about it.
Low-Income Countries and the IMF in a Changing World: Financing, Growth and the Path Forward
Wednesday, October 14, 2026, 4:30 pm - 5:45 pm ICT / 5:30 am - 6:45 am EDT / 10:30 am - 11:45 am BST | In Bangkok and Online
The panel will bring together senior policymakers, development finance officials, and independent experts to discuss what this changed environment means for the IMF role in LICs in the context of the broader development finance architecture — including what a more adequate and effective response might look like in terms of finance volumes, policy prescriptions, and program design. The discussion will be framed by new CGD analysis on IMF net financing flows to LICs.
The Future of MDBs: More Critical Than Ever
Thursday, October 15, 2026, 5:30 pm - 6:45 pm ICT / 6:30 am - 7:45 am EDT / 11:30 am - 12:45 pm BST | In Bangkok and Online
When G20 Finance Ministers asked the International Financial Architecture Working Group in 2023 to chart a path to better, bigger, and more effective multilateral development banks, they called for transformational reforms. The 2024 G20 Roadmap translated that ambition into thirteen concrete recommendations on operating as a system, mobilising private capital, expanding lending headroom, and directing concessional resources to where they matter most.
A new report, titled, 'More critical than ever: strengthening growth and resilience through the MDBs’, produced by researchers from four independent think tanks, takes stock of progress and identifies the priorities for the way ahead. It finds that two years on, the MDBs have responded on a broad front, with progress on balance sheet optimisation, instruments from hybrid capital to guarantee platforms coming online, and institutions that once worked in parallel increasingly working in concert.
This event provides an opportunity for national and MDB leadership to set out their perspective on how the MDB system can help to strengthen growth and resilience in a challenging world.