Arbitration weeks around the world: a city-by-city calendar

The short version

• An arbitration week is a city’s arbitration community hosting a concentrated week of conferences, workshops and receptions, mostly free and largely organised by the local arbitration community.
• Six major weeks recur each year: Paris in March, Singapore Convention Week in August, Hong Kong in October, Dubai and New York in November, and London in early December.
• Who runs them varies: an arbitral institution, a body that runs cases under its own rules, in Hong Kong (the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre, HKIAC); a government in Singapore (the Ministry of Law, with the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, UNCITRAL); and independent committees in Paris, New York and London.
• They are separate, independent events, not a franchise. Each has its own organiser, its own main conference and its own funding.
• Two naming traps: London holds two different events a year, London Arbitration Week in December and London International Disputes Week in June; and Singapore runs a Convention Week, not an arbitration week, which also covers mediation and litigation.
• For the law of each city as a seat (its legal home for disputes), see our seat guides; for the AI questions these weeks debate, see AI in arbitration.^1,3,4,7,9,13

What is an arbitration week?

An arbitration week is a concentrated run of independent arbitration events, usually about five days, held across one city under a shared banner. Conferences, panels, workshops and receptions are spread over the week, and they draw the international arbitration community to that city. Arbitration is private dispute resolution, a form of alternative dispute resolution (ADR): the parties agree that one or more arbitrators, rather than a national court, will decide, and the decision, the award, can be enforced in most countries. A city hosts a week partly to promote itself as a seat, the legal home of an arbitration that fixes which national courts supervise the case.^1,4

The format is decentralised. Many organisations host their own sessions on one shared calendar, while an organising body coordinates the banner, the dates and the main conference. Most sessions are free, and most of the work is done by the local arbitration community. For the law that governs cases seated in each city, see the seat guides: New York, London, the UAE for Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore. This guide covers the events, not the law.^1,3,4

The people these weeks gather are much the same each time: the parties’ lawyers, in-house counsel (the lawyers employed inside companies), the staff of arbitral institutions, and the neutrals, the arbitrators and mediators who decide cases or help parties settle them. A week is not one conference. It is a shared banner over many separate sessions, most of them hosted by firms, institutions and practitioner groups that pay their own way, with the organiser setting the dates and running the main conference. That structure is why a week can be large and mostly free at the same time.^1,3,4

Who runs the arbitration weeks?

No single body runs the circuit. Each week has its own organiser, and they fall into three kinds: an arbitral institution, a government, or a non-profit committee. An arbitral institution is a body that administers cases under its own rules.^4,7,9

• An arbitral institution. Hong Kong Arbitration Week is the main annual event of the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC).
• A government. Singapore Convention Week is run by Singapore’s Ministry of Law, in collaboration with the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) and partner organisations.
• Non-profit committees. Paris Arbitration Week is run by the Paris Arbitration Week association, a non-profit founded in 2017 by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the Comité français d’arbitrage, the Association française d’arbitrage and Paris Place d’Arbitrage. New York Arbitration Week is co-hosted by the New York International Arbitration Center (NYIAC) and the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb) New York Branch. London Arbitration Week is run by London Arbitration Week Limited.
• Dubai sits between these. Dubai Arbitration Week, which launched in 2011, describes itself as not-for-profit and community-led, shaped by a dedicated organising committee and supported by the Dubai International Arbitration Centre (DIAC). We say DIAC-supported, not DIAC-run.^{1,2,3,4,7,8,9,11,13}

What the organiser actually does is light-touch. It holds the banner, fixes the week’s dates so sessions do not clash, runs or curates the flagship conference, and lists everyone else’s events on one calendar. The rest is hosted and paid for by the firms and institutions taking part. That is true whether the organiser is an institution, a government department or a volunteer committee, which is why the same model works in cities with very different legal systems.^3,4,7

When is each arbitration week? The 2026 calendar

The circuit runs across the year: Paris in spring, Singapore in late summer, Hong Kong in autumn, Dubai and New York in November, and London at the start of December. Taken together, it is a schedule of the major international arbitration events of 2026, with the upcoming 2027 editions noted below where organisers have named them. The table below was last verified on 10 November 2026. Dates move year to year, so check each organiser’s own site before booking travel.^1,3,4,7,9,13

Two dates need a note as of 10 November 2026. New York Arbitration Week, the 8th edition, runs the week of 16 to 20 November 2026, but NYIAC’s own page is inconsistent: its banner says 16 to 20 November while its event listing starts on 17 November, so confirm the opening day with the organiser. Dubai Arbitration Week 2026 runs 9 to 13 November 2026 on the official site, and the DIFC Courts, the English-language commercial courts in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), list their own session inside the week for 11 November 2026, so the week is under way as this guide is published.^1,13,14

Next editions, where organisers have said anything, as of 10 November 2026: Hong Kong gives a save-the-date of 18 to 22 October 2027; the Paris Arbitration Week site carries a 2027 save-the-date of 15 to 19 March 2027, not yet held, which opens with the ICC’s 11th European Conference on International Arbitration on 15 to 17 March 2027, the conference that has opened the week before; and Singapore invites people to register interest for a 2027 edition without naming dates. The other weeks had not announced 2027 dates when we checked.^6,7,10,18

What is the difference between an arbitration week, a disputes week and a convention week?

The names are not interchangeable. A disputes week is broader than arbitration, and a convention week is broader still. Two cities show why the difference matters.^3,9

London holds two separate events each year. London Arbitration Week is a dedicated arbitration week at the start of December, run by London Arbitration Week Limited. London International Disputes Week is a different, broader event held in June, run by a different company, London International Disputes Week Limited, and it covers litigation and mediation as well as arbitration. People searching for one often land on the other.^3,19

Singapore does not run a separate arbitration week at all. Singapore Convention Week is built around the Singapore Convention on Mediation, the 2018 United Nations treaty on enforcing international mediated settlements, and it covers arbitration, mediation and litigation together. Its main arbitration event, the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) Symposium, sits inside the Convention Week. No official source names a stand-alone Singapore Arbitration Week.^9,12

A convention week is wider than either. Singapore’s is organised around a treaty, so it treats arbitration, mediation and court litigation as one field rather than keeping them apart. That is a deliberate contrast with an arbitration-only week, and it is why the SIAC Symposium appears as one event inside a larger programme rather than as the headline of its own week.^9,12

What happens during an arbitration week, and is it free?

Most weeks are built around a flagship conference, their single biggest event, plus dozens of smaller sessions: panels, workshops, young-practitioner meetings and receptions. Most side events are free once you register with the host; some sessions and dinners charge. You register through each host’s own page rather than through one central box office.^4,7

The named conferences differ by city. The ADR in Asia Conference anchors Hong Kong Arbitration Week on its main day. The SIAC Symposium is the arbitration flagship inside Singapore Convention Week, alongside the UNCITRAL Academy, a conference and set of workshops that the Ministry of Law and UNCITRAL run together. The ICC holds its European Conference on International Arbitration in the same week as Paris, which it describes as a key component of the week’s calendar. London convenes sessions at convenient venues across the City of London.^{3,5,7,9,11,20}

Scale, where organisers state it: Paris expects more than 10,000 practitioners worldwide for its 2026 edition. Hong Kong’s post-event page records more than 1,200 registrations from 53 jurisdictions and more than 40 affiliated events for 2026. Singapore recorded more than 5,600 attendances from more than 100 countries in 2025, and more than 70 partner events in 2026. Each figure is the organiser’s own and ties to the year shown.^4,7,9

How much a week costs you depends on what you attend. The side events and many panels are free once you register with the host; some sessions and the formal dinners can carry a fee. No single pass covers a whole week, and no central organiser sells one, so attendance is built session by session from each host’s own page. The weeks also differ in size and character, from Paris, which expects the biggest crowd, to the London event, which its organiser frames around quality rather than scale.^3,4,7

Why has the circuit grown?

The format spread because a week concentrates a city’s arbitration community in one place and promotes the city as a seat. A week lets institutions, law firms, arbitrators and in-house counsel meet over a few days instead of travelling to scattered events. Cities compete to host disputes, and a visible week is part of how they compete.^3,4

The timing shows the pull. Dubai Arbitration Week dates from 2011 and Paris from 2017; Singapore Convention Week was first held in 2019, alongside the signing of the Singapore Convention on Mediation. London Arbitration Week is the most recent: its first edition is reported as 2025 on event listings and in the legal press rather than on the organiser’s own site, which does not state a founding year. Hong Kong’s 2026 edition was its 15th and New York’s its 8th, which puts their first editions in 2012 and 2019. By 2026 the circuit ran from March to December with almost no empty month. The questions the weeks return to, in programme after programme, are the ones that decide where parties arbitrate: cost, speed, enforcement and, more recently, the use of AI.^{1,3,4,7,10,13,17}

Seat competition is what drives this. Parties pick where to arbitrate partly on the local courts, the available arbitrators and the ease of enforcing an award, and a week is a cheap, repeatable way for a city to make that case to the people who choose. Once a few cities ran one, the rest had reason to follow, which is how the circuit went from a handful of events to a near-continuous calendar.^3,4

What about regional weeks and the ICCA Congress?

Beyond the six city weeks, a regional week and one biennial congress round out the year. They are worth knowing because searchers often confuse them with the city weeks.^15,16

CanArbWeek, the Canadian Arbitration Week, ran in Toronto from 7 to 9 June 2026. It is put on by an organising committee, with sessions presented by a set of presenting organisations, rather than a single institution. We give only the dates and the committee structure, because its edition number and status are not stated on an official page.¹⁶

The ICCA Congress is different in kind. The International Council for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA) holds a congress every two years, and it moves between cities rather than staying in one. The Madrid congress ran from 12 to 15 April 2026; the next is in San Francisco from 7 to 10 May 2028, and a further one is set for 2030, though ICCA’s own pages differ on the 2030 host city, so we do not name it here. It is a single travelling congress, not a recurring city week.¹⁵

What do these weeks tell us about where arbitration is heading?

In our view, the arbitration weeks are where the field argues about its own future, and the published programmes keep circling the same questions. The ADR in Asia Conference in Hong Kong, the SIAC Symposium in Singapore and the ICC European Conference around Paris are where the profession works out what it thinks about cost, delay, access, the competition between seats and, more and more, the use of AI. That the circuit now fills the year, from Paris in March to London in December, and that a single Paris edition expects more than 10,000 practitioners, says the appetite for that argument is large. The bodies that run them are varied, an institution, a government and volunteer committees, yet their programmes rhyme. Read together, they show a field under pressure to handle more cases, more consistently, and with a clearer record, across borders. The spread of the format is the evidence: seats compete, and the conversation travels with them.^1,3,4,7,9

This guide covers the events. For the law of each seat, read the seat guides linked above. For the AI questions these weeks debate, see AI in arbitration and AI in dispute resolution. It is part of dispute resolution around the world; for how we research and check, see our method.