World Health Assembly
WHO's decision-making body of all member states, meeting annually.
The World Health Assembly must adopt the WHO Pandemic Agreement's pathogen-sharing annex by May 2027, the date it set in May 2026, after negotiators failed again on 18 September 2026 to agree a text.
Last refreshed: 4 October 2026
Timeline for World Health Assembly
Remained the May 2027 venue for adoption
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Pandemics and BiosecurityBackground
The World Health Assembly is WHO's decision-making body, made up of all member states and meeting once a year. Its May 2027 vote decides whether the WHO Pandemic Agreement can open for signature.
Its 78th session adopted that agreement in May 2025 without its Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing annex, the rulebook for trading pathogen samples and sequence data against returns such as vaccine doses. The treaty cannot open for signature until the annex is adopted. In May 2026 the 79th session deferred the annex and set May 2027 for its adoption.
That timetable gives the Assembly a Deadline it set for itself. Until its members vote the annex through, every other provision of the treaty stays on hold.
The annex vote now waits until 2027
On 19 May 2026 the 79th World Health Assembly deferred adoption of the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing annex and set May 2027 as the new date. That choice put the next Assembly in charge of whether the Pandemic Agreement it adopted in May 2025 can ever open for signature.
Negotiators have since given the Assembly nothing to vote on. The eighth session of WHO's Intergovernmental Working Group closed on 18 September without an agreed text, the second in a row. A week later WHO's account of the UN high-level meeting on pandemics restated the May 2027 date. The working group still lists an earlier special session of the Assembly in 2026 as an option, but its record leaves little room for one.