New Zealand's longest-running climate and business conference returns to the Viaduct Events Centre on 7-8 September 2026 under the theme Building Momentum. Driving Change., with a first-ever South Island livestream hub at Te Pae in Christchurch.
The Climate Change & Business Conference returns to Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland on Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 September 2026, running two days at the Viaduct Events Centre on Halsey Street under the theme *Building Momentum. Driving Change.* Both the dates and the venue are confirmed on the conference's own website and on the Environmental Defence Society's events page.
The organisers have pitched the 2026 edition squarely at the election year. The conference website sets out the questions the programme is built around: how New Zealand businesses can harness the energy of the global transition "even if our domestic policy settings lag behind"; what the business community's key policy asks are in the lead-up to Election 2026; and how the country might leverage Australia's shared COP31 leadership to bring attention, capital and collaboration to the region.
The speaker list published by the organisers is broad. International names confirmed include Johan Rockström, Professor of Earth System Science at the University of Potsdam and Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research; Laura Clarke OBE, chief executive of ClientEarth; and John Lang, founder of Climate Trunk and co-founder of the Net Zero Tracker. Broadcaster Miriama Kamo is listed as conference MC. Five political leaders appear on the speaker page — Rt Hon Chris Hipkins (Labour), Hon David Seymour (ACT), Chlöe Swarbrick (Green), Qiulae Wong (The Opportunity Party) and Climate Change Minister Hon Simon Watts (National) — alongside Jo Hendy of the Climate Change Commission, EECA chief executive Marcos Pelenur, KiwiRail chief executive Peter Reidy, Beca chief executive Amelia Linzey and sustainability leads from Air New Zealand, Fonterra, Xero, Woolworths NZ, Spark, BNZ and Westpac.
The format is plenary sessions plus three concurrent streams. The registration page states that plenaries and Streams A and B are live-streamed, while Stream C, because of the nature of those sessions, is not. Registration closes at midnight on 1 September 2026.
The conference is hosted jointly by three organisations. The Environmental Defence Society (EDS) is a long-standing environmental advocacy body working through policy, litigation and law reform; its own events page describes EDS as running two of the country's preeminent environmental conferences, of which this is one. The Sustainable Business Council (SBC) describes itself on the conference site as a membership organisation of more than 130 businesses whose members represent $118 billion of collective turnover, 33 per cent of GDP and nearly 190,000 full-time jobs. The Climate Leaders Coalition (CLC), formed in 2018, is a CEO-led group of close to 100 organisations that says its signatories account for 34 per cent of GDP, more than 210,000 employees and $126 billion of collective turnover.
It is run in-house rather than through an external professional conference organiser. EDS events director Fiona Driver is conference director, working with Alana Douglas, senior events manager for SBC and CLC, and conference producer Tina Luke.
SBC calls it Aotearoa New Zealand's leading and longest-running annual climate and business conference. The 2024 edition, also at the Viaduct Events Centre, marked the conference's 16th anniversary and drew more than 660 participants in person and online around the theme Leading Climate Action; SBC records the 2023 event as the largest to that point, with 625 in-person delegates plus a further 120 online. A Tech New Zealand listing for the 2024 edition put that year's programme at close to 35 sessions and more than 100 New Zealand-based and international speakers.
The room is corporate sustainability and climate practitioners, executives and directors, investors and bankers, lawyers and consultants, central and local government officials, iwi representatives and academics. The organisers run registration subsidies for NGOs, iwi representatives, full-time students, recent graduates and people new to the sector, start-ups and non-corporate individuals, plus Next Generation scholarships — a deliberate widening of the audience beyond the corporate core.
New for 2026 is a Christchurch satellite hub. The organisers have partnered with the Christchurch Sustainability Professionals Network to host a livestream hub at Te Pae in Ōtautahi, so South Island delegates can take in the plenaries and Streams A and B without flying north. The organisers cite lower travel emissions, broader access and stronger regional networks as the rationale. A livestream-only registration option is also available for delegates joining from anywhere.
The Viaduct Events Centre sits on Auckland's waterfront in the Wynyard Quarter, minutes from the city centre. Auckland Conventions, which operates the venue, describes it as a 6,000m² building across three levels with seven versatile rooms, built to five-star environmental standards with glass walls, balconies and wharf access. The main Waiheke space runs to 2,109m² with a 12-metre ceiling and seats up to 2,300 theatre-style; the Kawau room is 570m². That combination of one large plenary hall plus multiple breakout rooms is what makes a three-stream conference workable inside a single building.
Access is straightforward. The venue is walkable from the CBD and Britomart, the nearest parking building is the Downtown Carpark on Customs Street West, and Auckland Transport bus routes serve the waterfront. The organisers have listed a block of TFE Hotel Group properties, with the Travelodge Hotel Auckland Wynyard Quarter closest to the venue and Adina Britomart, Rendezvous Heritage and Adina CityLife in the central cluster; the venue's own guidance notes Park Hyatt Auckland, Sofitel Auckland Viaduct Harbour, QT Auckland and JW Marriott Auckland nearby. KiwiRail and Great Journeys NZ are also offering registered delegates a discounted Scenic fare on the Northern Explorer for travel between 4 and 13 September.
Few recurring corporate conferences in New Zealand have this much continuity: same waterfront venue across multiple editions, the same three-organisation host structure, and delegate numbers that on the organisers' own 2023 and 2024 figures put it among the larger association-style gatherings in the calendar.
It is also unusually transparent about its own footprint. The organisers published a certified emissions statement for CCBC 2025 showing the conference generated 107.59 tCO₂e, with 91 per cent of that attributable to attendee travel, measured under the GHG Protocol and the Net Zero Carbon Events Guide and offset through 32 tCO₂ of native forest removals on Banks Peninsula. That number is the reason for the two structural changes visible in 2026 — a satellite hub that treats a second city as part of the event rather than a rival to it, and a rail travel arrangement. For organisers and venues elsewhere in the country, that hub-and-livestream model is a working template for extending reach without splitting an event in two.
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