The 6th International Symposium on the Ocean in a High-CO₂ World runs at Tākina Wellington Convention & Exhibition Centre from 13 to 16 October 2026, hosted by Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington. The organisers say the four-yearly global gathering will draw more than 400 ocean scientists, policy people and Indigenous knowledge holders, plus a Monday 12 October day of pre-symposium meetings.
The 6th International Symposium on the Ocean in a High-CO₂ World will be held at Tākina Wellington Convention & Exhibition Centre from Tuesday 13 to Friday 16 October 2026. The event's own website, highco2-vi.org, is live, registration is open, and the organisers have published a downloadable provisional programme dated 10 August 2026.
The symposium carries the theme "Moving from Understanding to Action using Multiple Knowledge Systems". According to the symposium website, Ngā Uri o Taranaki Whānui gifted the event's name in recognition of the partnerships that developed it, and the whakataukī "Mā te kōrero, kia mārama. Mā te mārama, kia mahi tahi. Mā te mahi tahi, kia mōhio" sits at the head of the programme.
The published programme shows the footprint is wider than the four core days. Monday 12 October is given over to invitation-only pre-symposium meetings on Level 1 at Tākina — including a marine carbon dioxide removal cohort convened under The Ocean Foundation's EquiSea initiative, a session on advancing ocean acidification policy in the Pacific Island region, and a SCOR infrastructural project meeting on Changing Ocean Biological Systems — followed by an icebreaker at Shed 22 on Taranaki Street that evening. Registration and the exhibition open at 08.00 on Tuesday 13 October, with the mihi whakatau and formal opening at 09.00 in the Rongomātāne A room.
The symposium is hosted by Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington and managed by Wellington professional conference organiser Conferences & Events Ltd. The local organising committee is listed on the symposium site and led from the New Zealand marine science community: Christopher Cornwall (Victoria University of Wellington), Christina McGraw (University of Otago), Rachel Hale and Cliff Law (Earth Sciences NZ), Catriona Hurd (Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies), Jess Ericson and Norman Ragg (Cawthron Institute), Kim Currie (Pacific Island OA Centre), Lee Rauhina-August (Ahumai Holdings), Mark Fenwick (Coastal People Southern Skies), Mary A. Sewell (University of Auckland) and Aleluia Taise (National University of Samoa).
An international committee sits alongside it, including Sam Dupont (University of Gothenburg), Lina Hansson (International Atomic Energy Agency), Kirsten Isensee (UNESCO), Katy Soapi (SPC and Pacific Island OA Centre) and members from Argentina, Hong Kong, Alaska, France, Mozambique and the United Arab Emirates. A separate early career research committee draws students and postdocs from New Zealand, Fiji, Peru, Croatia, Japan, Hawai'i and Mozambique.
The series itself is long-running institutional science. The Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) records that it convened the first symposium with the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO at UNESCO headquarters in Paris in May 2004, and that the meeting was partly responsible for bringing the term "ocean acidification" to wider attention. SCOR and IOC then set a four-yearly cycle: Monaco in 2008, where IGBP and the IAEA joined as co-sponsors; Monterey, California in 2012, which SCOR says attracted more than 600 scientists and educators; and later editions in Hobart and Lima. The Wellington edition is described on the symposium site as "organised in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency", with the Monaco-based OACIS initiative — coordinated by the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation — as foundation partner.
The sponsorship prospectus on the symposium site puts the networking opportunity at "400+ professionals working in and with ocean science". The audience is broader than a pure academic congress: the organisers describe bringing together researchers, policymakers, industry partners and Indigenous knowledge holders.
Seven themes structure the science: beyond tipping points and translating science to action; global-driven changes in biodiversity and ecosystem resilience; multiple stressors' effects on marine organisms; ocean-based solutions; technological advances in marine climate change research; the modulating role of time; and working across knowledge systems in a high-CO₂ world. Ocean acidification remains the spine of the series, but this edition explicitly widens to warming, deoxygenation and marine carbon dioxide removal.
Beyond oral and poster sessions, the organisers list more than 22 free workshops, meetings and training sessions, covering mCDR, policy engagement, ocean carbon observations and modelling, experimental design and learning across knowledge systems. Opening keynotes are Nathan Kenny of the University of Otago, on genomics for climate-resilient kaimoana in Aotearoa New Zealand, and Cana Uluak Itchuaqiyaq of the Center for Sustainable Engagement in the Arctic at Virginia Tech, on Indigenous leadership and Arctic Ocean stewardship. A collection of papers arising from the symposium will be published with the BMC journal Ocean Ecosystems, with submissions open until 15 March 2027.
Tākina sits at 50 Cable Street in Te Aro, opposite the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. It opened in mid-2023 and offers 10,000sqm of conference and exhibition space across two floors. The symposium is using named rooms including Rongomātāne A and B on the main programme and Mātiu, Mākaro and Mokopuna for pre-symposium meetings — a room-count that reflects a genuinely multi-stream congress rather than a single-plenary meeting.
Access is short. The symposium's venue page describes Tākina as a 15-minute drive from Wellington Airport; its destination page puts the airport roughly ten minutes from the central business district, served by taxis, shuttles and the Airport Flyer bus, and notes a city centre about two kilometres in diameter. For an international delegation that matters: most movement between beds, sessions and social functions is walkable.
The official accommodation block is tightly clustered around the venue. The symposium lists Museum Apartment Hotel at 170m, TRYP by Wyndham at 280m and Oaks Wellington at 400m, with ibis Wellington, Novotel Wellington and Quest 256 Lambton between one and 1.4 kilometres. Catering — morning teas and lunches across four days — is served in the poster and exhibition area at Tākina, with a welcome and poster reception on the Tuesday, a symposium dinner on the Thursday and a celebration dinner on the Friday. Field trips add dispersed demand: ecosanctuary tours and SCUBA diving in the Taputeranga Marine Reserve on Wellington's south coast, both capacity-limited and booked at registration.
This is a textbook example of the intellectual-capital bid model. Meeting Newz reported in October 2025 that Business Events Wellington, supported by Tourism New Zealand's Conference Assistance Programme, won the symposium in collaboration with Victoria University of Wellington, alongside two other conferences for the capital. Business Events Wellington manager Irette Ferreira told the publication the city focuses on attracting events aligned to its intellectual capital, and Tourism New Zealand global manager business events Penelope Ryan said the wins highlighted connections between convention bureaux and research networks.
The academic case was made on geography. Cornwall told Meeting Newz that Wellington is the only New Zealand city with a marine reserve on its doorstep, and that with ocean acidification and warming "manifesting now", it was the right time and place for scientists, communities, mana whenua and government to meet global peers.
For the sector, the read is straightforward: a four-yearly, SCOR- and IOC-lineage global symposium with IAEA cooperation, four-plus days of room nights in October shoulder season, 400-plus international delegates, an exhibition floor and a full social and field-trip programme — secured through a university partnership rather than a purely commercial pitch.
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