Paris Arbitration Week: what it is, who runs it, when it runs

The short version

• Paris Arbitration Week (PAW) is a yearly week of international-arbitration events held across Paris. A non-profit association that calls itself “independent and apolitical” runs it.
• It is decentralised. Hundreds of separate events are hosted by partner firms and institutions, not one central conference, and no single venue is booked.
• It was founded in 2017. The first edition ran 24 to 28 April 2017 and headlined the first ICC European Conference on International Arbitration.
• Four arbitration institutions founded it: the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), Paris Place d’Arbitrage, the Comité français d’arbitrage and the Association française d’arbitrage.
• The 10th edition ran 23 to 27 March 2026: 267 events, 282 partners, 7,700 participants and 36,500 registrations across all events.
• The next edition is announced for 15 to 19 March 2027 as a save-the-date, as of 10 November 2026; it has not yet been held.^1,2,3,5,6,9

What is Paris Arbitration Week?

Paris Arbitration Week is an annual week that brings the international-arbitration community to Paris. That community is wide: the parties who use arbitration, the arbitrators who decide the cases (the neutrals, the people who hear a dispute and rule on it), the lawyers who argue them, academics, expert witnesses and the institutions that run cases. An institution here means a body that administers arbitrations under its own rules, such as the ICC. The organiser frames Paris as a leading seat for international arbitration (the seat is a case’s legal home, the place whose courts supervise it), and PAW as the week its community gathers around. It calls PAW “a premier forum for academic debate and knowledge exchange.”^1,5

The week runs on a decentralised model. Instead of one central conference, many self-organised events sit under one umbrella across five days. The recurring themes are plain to read on the organiser’s pages: it lists “the impact of AI on arbitration,” sustainability and diversity among the issues the week takes on. For the other weeks on the circuit, see the arbitration weeks around the world. For what institutions and courts say about AI, see AI in arbitration.^1,4,5

Who organises Paris Arbitration Week?

Paris Arbitration Week is run by the Paris Arbitration Week association, which describes itself as “an independent and apolitical association.” Its members set its direction. The FAQ states that every year the PAW General Assembly elects three new board members to the PAW Organising Committee, and that the events themselves are run by the partners, not by a central office.^4,5

Four founding institutions sit behind the association, each shown as a logo on the homepage: the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), Paris Place d’Arbitrage, the Comité français d’arbitrage and the Association française d’arbitrage. The 2017 programme lists Paris Place d’Arbitrage, the ICC and the Comité français d’arbitrage as the backers of the PAW Opening Cocktail that year; the Association française d’arbitrage now sits among the four founders on the current site.^1,3,9

A note on names. The PAW site is parisarbitrationweek.com. A separate body, Paris Place d’Arbitrage at parisarbitration.com, is also one of PAW’s four founding institutions. It is not the PAW organiser, and the two sites should not be confused.

What is the ICC’s role in the week?

The ICC is a co-founder and a partner, not the sole host. In its own 2023 notice the ICC calls itself “a proud partner of PAW,” says PAW was “founded in part by ICC,” and that PAW “connects over 10,000 members of the international arbitration community in Paris.” The ICC adds that Paris is “home to the Secretariat of the ICC International Court of Arbitration,” the Secretariat that administers its arbitrations. The week opens with the ICC’s European Conference on International Arbitration. It was the first conference in 2017, the seventh in 2023 and the tenth in 2026, which tracks PAW’s own edition count. For what the ICC publishes on AI, see ICC and AI in arbitration.^2,3,6

When is Paris Arbitration Week held?

PAW runs once a year in spring. The first edition ran 24 to 28 April 2017, and the 10th ran 23 to 27 March 2026. For 2027 the homepage carries a save-the-date, 15 to 19 March, rather than a held event, as of 10 November 2026.^1,2,3

The official edition archive lists editions for 2017 to 2021 and 2023 to 2026. We read the 2024 and 2025 dates off their own edition pages for the table below. The archive carries no 2022 link, but a 2022 edition is implied by the edition count, so we say nothing more about it.^1,7,8

When was Paris Arbitration Week founded?

Paris Arbitration Week was founded in 2017. The official 2017 programme shows the first week ran 24 to 28 April 2017 and headlined the “1st ICC European Conference on International Arbitration.” The guiding-principles page says Paris “birthed the very first arbitration week worldwide,” and that PAW has run on its core values “for the past decade.” A first edition in 2017 makes 2026 the tenth, which the official site also marks as PAW’s 10th anniversary.^2,3,5

Some non-official pages give 2016 as the founding year. No official source we read supports that. The French Ministry of Justice records the association as created in 2017, the first edition that actually ran was 24 to 28 April 2017, and the official record is consistent on 2017.^1,3,9

How big is Paris Arbitration Week?

The official 2026 edition page reports 267 events, 282 partners, 7,700 participants and 36,500 registrations across all events. Those are the numbers for a single year. Separately, the homepage gives rounded, site-wide figures: more than 10,000 arbitration practitioners over five days, more than 1,150 speakers, more than 1,600 at the Opening Gala and more than 500 at the Young Arbitration Cruise. The ICC’s own line, that PAW “connects over 10,000 members of the international arbitration community,” is of the same order, though it describes the size of the community rather than five-day attendance. Read the “more than 10,000” as the week’s general scale, and use the edition-page numbers for a single year such as 2026.^1,2,6

What happens during the week, and where?

PAW is a programme of hundreds of separate events: conferences, hands-on workshops, panel debates on points of law, roundtables and receptions, held in person, hybrid and online. The ICC European Conference, the flagship opening event, starts the week. Flagship here means the headline event the week is built around. There is no single venue. The FAQ states plainly that “there is no general conference space booked for PAW,” and that a large majority of the events are held at the organising partners’ offices. In 2017 the opening cocktail and the first ICC conference were at the Salons Hoche.^1,2,3,4

Beyond the working sessions, the week carries a social programme the organiser treats as part of the format: an Opening Cocktail, a Law Rocks concert, the PAW Young Arbitration Cruise and the #PAWGames. Each partner picks its own topic within the week’s frame, so the content is set by the hosts rather than a single committee, and the mix spans the parties, their lawyers, arbitrators, academics and students.^1,4

There is no France seat guide in this library yet. For the law of arbitrating with Paris as the seat, see dispute resolution around the world. For the other city weeks, see London, New York, Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore Convention Week.¹

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

In our view, Paris Arbitration Week is one place where the field argues about its own future in public. Read its own programme and the same questions keep returning: cost, delay, access, the competition between seats, and now the use of AI, which PAW lists among its headline themes alongside sustainability and diversity. A week built in 2017 around a single opening conference now carries 267 events and 282 partners across five days, run by a community of partners under a non-profit, apolitical association rather than by one central body. Set beside the other city weeks in London, New York and elsewhere, Paris is one stop on a circuit that is working to handle more cases, more consistently and with a clearer record, across borders. The weeks are where the field works through these questions in the open, often well before any institution changes its rules.^1,2,5,9