NATO is scaling back its high-level meetings and will not hold a leaders’ summit in Albania next year as previously planned, amid tension within the alliance over defence spending, Iran and the war in Ukraine.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama confirmed on Thursday that allies had not agreed on a date for their next leaders’ gathering. “There is not yet a common position on when the summit will happen, for sure not in 2027,” he said, speaking in Dublin ahead of a meeting of European leaders. “In 2028, if it will be a summit, it will be in Tirana.”
A NATO official confirmed that Albania remains the next host, but said a decision on the date has yet to be made. The alliance had been expected to settle the question by October to give Tirana enough time to prepare.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte played down the change in an interview with The Associated Press. “We are flexible with NATO summits,” he said. “We have summits when we need them,” and the next one will be held “when a necessity is there.”
The cutbacks go well beyond the leaders’ summit. NATO defence ministers usually meet in October, but no talks took place last month and none are planned for October 2027. Foreign ministers will have only one scheduled meeting next year instead of two, under what NATO describes as a “reorganisation package”. Since taking office, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have each skipped a NATO meeting or left before talks concluded.
Albania was named as the host for next year’s summit in 2025. The declaration adopted at the alliance’s June 2025 summit in The Hague said leaders looked forward to “our next meeting in Turkiye in 2026 followed by a meeting in Albania”, but Albania’s name was removed from the declaration issued after the NATO meeting in Ankara this July.
Reuters reported in June that plans for the Albania summit had been thrown into doubt by resistance from the Trump administration and dissatisfaction among allies with Tirana’s low defence spending. NATO has also been considering ending its recent practice of holding annual summits, a move that could avoid a potentially tense encounter with President Donald Trump later in his term. The alliance previously held summits every two years until about a decade ago.
Albania expects to exceed NATO’s previous benchmark of 2 per cent of gross domestic product on defence in 2026, but remains well below the alliance’s new long-term objective of 5 per cent by 2035, including 3.5 per cent for core military requirements.
Sources: The Associated Press — “NATO to skip a leaders’ summit in Albania next year as high-level meetings are scaled back” (https://www.lapost.com/content/nato-to-skip-a-leaders-summit-in-albania-next-year-as-high-level-meetings-are-scaled-back); Reuters — “NATO will not hold summit in Tirana next year, Albania’s Rama says” (https://q106fm.com/2026/11/12/nato-will-not-hold-summit-in-tirana-next-year-albanias-rama-says/)
