Inclusion International and our World Congress co-host Sharjah City for Humanitarian Services are thrilled to announce that the draft programme for World Congress is now available!

The World Congress Programme Committee has been hard at work designing a set of sessions that cover most important topics for our network.

Explore sessions on inclusive education, employment, community living, legal capacity, and much more—and learn about real experiences and solutions from our network.

The draft programme features more than 80 sessions led by self-advocates, families, and organisations – featuring speakers from more than 50 countries!

With workshop and consultation sessions, panels on important topics, skill building sessions for organisations, and more – there’s something for everyone at the 2025 World Congress!

View the 2025 World Congress Programme

What are the Programme highlights?

The World Congress Programme is made up of many different kinds of sessions.

There are sessions about all of the big issues that our network works on – like closing institutions, inclusive education, the right to vote, care and support, and more.

There are also sessions about topics that our members told us they want to start doing more work on – like climate change, gender, and some of the big trends from the Global Disability Summit.

There are some sessions just for self-advocates, and some sessions just for families.

We also have a stream of sessions to help make organisations stronger – on topics like how to do fundraising, how to use social media for advocacy, and how we can work better with other movements.

Every single session has the voices of self-advocates or families in them – self-advocates and families are who we are, and the World Congress is all about celebrating their work!

The World Congress draft Programme can be searched by topic, to help you find the sessions that are most important to you.

View the 2025 World Congress Programme

Stay tuned for Arabic, French, and Spanish versions of the Programme to launch soon!

How was the Programme created?

Inclusion International and Sharjah City for Humanitarian Services created a World Congress Programme Committee to help us build the programme.

The World Congress Programme Committee includes self-advocates, family members, and people from different regions – this helped to make sure that we heard lots of different perspectives about what members want to see at the World Congress.

The Programme Committee collected applications from organisations that wanted to host a World Congress session, and received nearly 150 applications!

They got feedback from different experts, and then reviewed all of the applications to make a Programme that covers all of the topics that our network cares about.

They also worked with session hosts to make sure that the descriptions of the sessions were easy to understand and approved by self-advocates.

They were also supported by an Accessibility Committee made up of self-advocates, who gave advice about what format the Programme should be in. Their role is very important to make sure we are following the Listen Include Respect Guidelines when planning the World Congress.

Now that the draft Programme is out, the Programme Committee’s work isn’t over yet!

Now the Committee is hard at work on planning the opening and closing session of the World Congress, supporting the teams planning the Self-Advocacy Summit and Families Summit, and preparing information sessions for the session hosts.

A big thank you goes out to all of the volunteers on our World Congress planning committees who are working so hard to make this our best World Congress yet!

Ready to join us at the World Congress?

If the Programme has convinced you and you’re ready to join us at the World Congress, registration is now open!

Early bird prices run until June 15th – register before then to get the cheapest price!

You can go through the registration form in English, Spanish, French, or Arabic.

You can also get more information about travel and accommodation on the World Congress website.

Register Now for the World Congress!

We can’t wait to see you in Sharjah!