11th NPT Review Conference at UN Headquarters; First After New START Expiry
New York, 27 April 2026
Key points
- The 11th NPT Review Conference opened at UN Headquarters on 27 April under the presidency of Vietnamese Ambassador Do Hung Viet; runs through 22 May
- First NPT RevCon to convene without a bilateral US-Russia nuclear arms-control instrument in force since New START's expiry earlier this year
- NATO statement issued ahead of opening criticised Russian Oreshnik deployments as "irresponsible nuclear signalling" and Chinese arsenal expansion without transparency
The 11th NPT Review Conference opened at UN Headquarters on 27 April under the presidency of Vietnamese Ambassador Do Hung Viet, the first review cycle to convene without any bilateral US-Russia nuclear arms-control instrument in force since New START's expiry earlier this year.
The conference runs through 22 May 2026 and is the first review cycle since the 2022 RevCon, which closed without consensus over Russian language objections related to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The 2026 cycle opens under more constrained circumstances: New START has expired without a successor framework, the US-Russia bilateral nuclear-transparency channel has been suspended since 2023, and Chinese arsenal expansion has accelerated since the 2024 force-modernisation disclosures.
NATO's Assistant Secretary General Boris Ruge issued a statement on behalf of the North Atlantic Council on 21 April ahead of the conference opening, characterising recent Russian Oreshnik medium-range ballistic-missile deployments to Belarus as "irresponsible nuclear signalling" and criticising Chinese arsenal expansion proceeding without transparency or arms-control engagement. France issued a parallel statement aligning with the NATO position while reserving its independent deterrent posture.
The procedural focus of the 2026 RevCon is the Article VI compliance review, the Vienna-format negative security assurances debate, and the strengthened safeguards regime under the IAEA's 2024 Additional Protocol updates. Substantive consensus is not expected; the test for the conference is whether the parties can produce an outcome document that does not collapse to the level of the 2015 and 2022 cycles. The strategic context is the post-New-START ratchet documented in Signal No. 43.
Sources: United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, North Atlantic Council, IAEA, US Department of State, Permanent Mission of Vietnam to the UN.
First reported in Signal No. 47, 27 April 2026.
