Trans Road Map for AIDS 2026

Details about Trans Networking Zone activities will be added soon.

The Trans Networking Zone will provide a dedicated, culturally grounded hub for networking, skills exchange, and collective action on HIV, health, and human rights, with deliberate visibility for Brazil, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

Across conference days, we will deliver continuous drop-in engagement plus at least 15 scheduled interactive moments, including facilitated dialogues, short skills exchanges, partner-led spotlights, and community conversations. GATE will facilitate at least 50 documented introductions or follow-up leads through opt-in sign-ins.

Coffee, tea and water will be available throughout opening hours. We will run daily trivia and games with small prizes, offer promotional materials throughout the week, and host celebratory community gatherings with food and drinks to strengthen solidarity and embody “Rebuild” and “Rise.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends person-centred approaches to support people living with HIV in the management of their care and to support HIV prevention among key populations and other people with increased vulnerability to acquiring HIV.

Person-centred care (PCC) is an approach to care that consciously adopts the perspectives of individuals, caregivers, families and communities as participants in, and beneficiaries of, trusted health systems organized around the comprehensive needs of people rather than individual diseases and respects social preferences. Evidence shows that PCC approaches reduce HIV-related mortality and morbidity and improve health-related quality of life.

Based on a global consensus-building process, IAS – the International AIDS Society, WHO and partners have published a roadmap for scaling up PCC in the HIV response. The roadmap outlines the necessary roles and actions for different stakeholders to realize the full potential of PCC. To further promote the operationalization of the roadmap, this session will assess a range of barriers and facilitators on the path to operationalizing the roadmap to scale up PCC in the HIV response.

Charting a way forward, PCC advocates will outline the barriers and facilitators impacting access to person-centred care for their communities based on their lived and professional experience. By fostering shared learning and dialogue, the session aims to further accelerate adoption of PCC and strengthen our collective commitment to transforming HIV responses around the needs, rights and priorities of people living with and affected by HIV.

A cure for HIV is still needed as antiretroviral therapy (ART) is lifelong, which may be difficult to sustain, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Moreover, people living with HIV (PLWH) are at increased risk of various comorbidities. Recent studies have demonstrated a proof of concept that an HIV cure is possible. However, these studies have primarily been undertaken in high-income countries with relatively low disease burden, mostly in men who have sex with men (MSM) living with HIV-1 subtype B.

This contrasts not only with sub-Saharan Africa, where most HIV-1 infections occur, the epidemic includes multiple non-B subtypes, and transmission is more evenly distributed among males and females, but also with regions such as Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), where the epidemic is largely concentrated among key populations, particularly MSM and transgender women, and where prevalence in these groups can be disproportionately high despite lower overall population prevalence. Although some LAC countries have achieved strong ART coverage and reduced AIDS-related mortality, persistent stigma, inequality, and barriers to prevention and care continue to shape transmission dynamics.

Cure strategies will therefore need to be effective across diverse epidemic contexts, including sub-Saharan Africa for maximal global health impact, while also addressing concentrated epidemics in regions such as LAC, where social and structural factors play a critical role in ongoing HIV transmission.

The Sub-Saharan African Network for TB/HIV Research Excellence (SANTHE) leads this session, in partnership with the Latin America HIV Cure Consortium. The expected goals and outcomes are to highlight ongoing HIV cure research by African and LAC investigators and to promote collaboration between scientists and other stakeholders interested in HIV cure research in LMICs.

The AIDS 2026 opening session will bring together leading voices from across HIV research, policy and advocacy to set the tone for the conference. Grounded in the conference theme, the opening session will call on delegates to come together to rethink, rebuild and rise in support of an evidence-based, resilient and fully funded HIV response.

Details about Trans Networking Zone activities will be added soon.

Stigma and discrimination continue to undermine HIV prevention and treatment. Manifestations of stigma, including intersectional and structural forms, remain complex and context specific, demanding targeted, evidence-based responses. This session will present: structural stigma and health inequalities; measurement of stigma and discrimination, and evidence-based interventions in HIV research; and health system levers to reduce stigma and discrimination, and incorporating these into clinical practices.

This symposium explores the urgent challenge of integrating community-led monitoring into health policy and decision-making processes in environments marked by political conservatism, the anti-rights backlash and restricted civic spaces. Panellists will discuss how communities can continue to generate credible data, sustain financing and influence policy, even where the value of community insight is actively undermined or undervalued. The session will highlight hard-won lessons and new strategies from activists, funders and policy allies working under tightening political and fiscal conditions.

This satellite session will showcase the latest evidence on person-centred HIV prevention, including innovative and community-based delivery models for oral and long-acting injectable pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) based on human rights principles, from across Latin America and the Caribbean.

Applying a person-centred care (PCC) lens, presenters will spotlight prevention strategies that respond to the complex and intersecting health needs of people with increased vulnerability to acquire HIV and STIs and the importance of partnerships between community organizations, policy makers and researchers that reflect the lived experience of local communities.

People from key populations, including sex workers, gay men and other men who have sex with men, people who use drugs and trans people may face significant barriers to access HIV testing and prevention services.

Drawing on experiences from diverse healthcare system and community settings, speakers will highlight promising practices that respond to people’s preferences, needs and lived realities, and examine how person-centred care principles can be effectively operationalized in HIV prevention programmes. The session will provide practical insights into what is working, for whom, and why, and will be of particular interest to researchers, advocates, implementers, and funders seeking to strengthen equitable, acceptable and sustainable HIV prevention responses in the region.

Details about Trans Networking Zone activities will be added soon.

Population-level surveys in several countries show that the proportion of people identifying with fluid sexual and gender identities is growing, especially among young people. Many elements of the response to HIV have been structured according to specific key populations and in a gendered way (for example, surveillance systems allowing only for male/female; and programmes focused on cis gay men, female sex workers and trans women).

People with fluid and diverse sexualities and genders are increasingly demanding that HIV programmes, services, research and health promotion be more inclusive of their experience. Without changing our approaches, programmes and research risk losing their social license with the communities they aim to reach and work with. This session will aim to examine the implications for the future of the HIV response in terms of surveillance, socio-behavioural research, health promotion, community education and clinical practice. It will seek to explore these questions:

• How do we capture fluidity at fixed points in time and over time in data systems (programmes and research)?
• How do we prioritize people most vulnerable to HIV while increasing diversity and inclusiveness?
• How are our data systems being left behind by emerging social realities?

This interactive workshop will explore legal gender recognition as a structural HIV intervention for trans communities. Drawing on Fundación GAAT’s TransIdentifiquémonos model in Colombia, participants will learn how access to gender-affirming identity documents improves HIV testing, linkage to care, PrEP access, treatment adherence and viral suppression.

Highlighting community leadership that enabled over 600 trans people to obtain identity documents in one year, the session will show how identity operates as prevention. Through participatory exercises, participants will analyse barriers in the HIV cascade and design practical, replicable “identity as prevention” actions to strengthen trans-inclusive HIV responses beyond the 95-95-95 targets.

This interactive Global Village workshop presents a community led, faith engaged model from Pakistan that works with Islamic leaders, transgender advocates, and health providers to reduce HIV stigma and improve access to testing, treatment, and sexual and reproductive health services.

Participants will explore how Islamic ethics of compassion, justice, and protection of life can support human rights based HIV responses rather than act as barriers. Through real case examples, tools, and shared experiences, the session demonstrates how culturally grounded strategies can increase trust, service uptake, and safety for marginalised populations in Muslim-majority and other conservative contexts.

Details about Trans Networking Zone activities will be added soon.

Flash-Mob Fusion is a high-energy, participatory performance designed to bring the AIDS 2026 theme “Rethink, rebuild and re-rise” to life through collective movement, creativity and youth-led expression. Hosted in the Global Village, this activity will gather conference participants, young people, artists and members of key and vulnerable populations to co-create a powerful flash-mob that amplifies messages of inclusion, solidarity and hope.

The performance will use choreography, music and visual placards to challenge stigma, rethink dominant narratives around HIV, rebuild community connections and re-rise voices that are often marginalized. Participants will be engaged through social media, community networks, pre-conference mobilization and on-site mobilization, ensuring broad and diverse participation. More than 20 participants will be mobilized and engaged in the performance. Short rehearsals held during the conference will make the activity accessible to first-time performers and encourage spontaneous engagement.

Flash-Mob Fusion is intentionally designed as an open, low-barrier space where creativity becomes advocacy. By centering youth participation and lived experience, the activity highlights the role of young people and communities in shaping more equitable, rights-based and inclusive HIV responses. The flash-mob will also serve as a moment of collective visibility within the Global Village, inviting audiences to reflect, connect and be inspired.

Through movement and shared expression, Flash-Mob Fusion transforms the conference theme into action, demonstrating how communities can rethink the present, rebuild solidarity and re-rise together toward a more just and inclusive future.