UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) Resolution 5/14 (2 March 2022) mandated an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to agree a legally binding instrument covering the full life cycle of plastics. Sessions of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) ran from INC-1 in Punta del Este (November 2022) through Paris, Nairobi, Ottawa and Busan (November to December 2024, no agreement) to INC-5.2 in Geneva (5 to 15 August 2025), which collapsed over production caps, chemicals of concern, finance and voting rules; the chair later resigned.
A one-day procedural session, INC-5.3, was held in Geneva on 7 February 2026 and elected Julio Cordano of Chile as chair, with no substantive negotiation. In August 2026 the chair released a non-negotiated 'aid to negotiations' reference text, which campaigners including Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Break Free From Plastic call a retreat on production limits and chemicals. A closed heads-of-delegation meeting runs in Bangkok from 27 to 30 September 2026, informal consultations are planned for 25 January to 2 February 2027, and the next formal session, INC-5.4, is scheduled for 13 to 24 March 2027.
Status as at September 2026: no treaty text agreed and no obligation in force, so there is no commencement date; negotiations continuing; observers excluded from the heads-of-delegation meetings. Dates verified against the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) press release of 7 February 2026 on the election of the chair and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)'s September 2026 note on the Bangkok meeting on 23 September 2026.