Orin Gor­don

The Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM 2026), which be­gins next Sun­day in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, is its 29th sum­mit.

This up­com­ing one, from No­vem­ber 1 to 4, is go­ing to be the fourth one held in the Caribbean, the most re­cent in Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2009. By pop­u­la­tion size, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da is the small­est Com­mon­wealth coun­try to host a sum­mit. By land area, on­ly Mal­ta (the host in 2015) is small­er.

CHOGM 2026 is a big deal for a small state.

Com­mon­wealth sum­mits are held every two years. The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic caused the post­pone­ment of the 2020 Rwan­da sum­mit to 2022. In May 2023, Com­mon­wealth lead­ers met with King Charles III in Lon­don to for­mal­ly wel­come him as the new Head of the Com­mon­wealth fol­low­ing his ac­ces­sion to the throne in Sep­tem­ber 2022.

The King’s pres­ence in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da rais­es the stakes. De­spite gen­tle prod­ding, Buck­ing­ham Palace has said that the King will not be is­su­ing a for­mal apol­o­gy for Britain’s role in the slave trade, and that it’s a mat­ter for the elect­ed gov­ern­ment of the UK.

Nev­er­the­less, the head of the Caribbean’s Repa­ra­tions Com­mis­sion, Sir Hi­lary Beck­les, ap­pealed to the King to sup­port repa­ra­tions dis­cus­sions at the sum­mit, and use his in­flu­ence to nudge talks be­tween Britain and the Caribbean on the is­sue.

Most of the 56-mem­ber Com­mon­wealth is com­prised of small states, and the agen­da re­flects that. Be­sides repa­ra­tions (ti­tled Repara­to­ry Jus­tice), the sum­mit will ad­dress en­vi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges faced by Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS), and seek to un­lock “sus­tain­able in­vest­ment through plat­forms like the Com­mon­wealth Busi­ness Fo­rum”—one of its main side­bar events.

The rest of the agen­da com­pris­es “Dig­i­tal In­clu­sion” (spread­ing the ben­e­fits of tech­nol­o­gy to dig­i­tal­ly-de­prived economies) and strength­en­ing democ­ra­cy and gov­er­nance, one of the Com­mon­wealth’s stand­out ac­tiv­i­ties.

For An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, CHOGM 2026 is the biggest and most im­por­tant high-lev­el event they’ve host­ed. In del­e­gate num­bers (12,000-plus ver­sus 3,000), it will dwarf the SIDS con­fer­ence of May 2024. The coun­try is busy­ing it­self in readi­ness—not just for CHOGM 2026, but for its 45th in­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary on No­vem­ber 1, the same day that the sum­mit be­gins. Flags line the streets every­where. There is a sense of ur­gent an­tic­i­pa­tion, and a lot of prepara­to­ry ac­tiv­i­ty.

For­eign Min­is­ter Chet Greene is lead­ing a se­ries of town­hall meet­ings—broad­cast live—to up­date the pub­lic on where and how all of the box­es are ticked…from traf­fic plans, to trans­port and ac­com­mo­da­tion arrange­ments for the huge for­eign con­tin­gent among the 12,000 ex­pect­ed to take part in the sum­mit, to ex­pand­ed flight and air­port ser­vices for del­e­gates fly­ing in from as far as Ocea­nia/Pa­cif­ic, to emer­gency re­sponse prepa­ra­tion plans for every­one in the coun­try at the time.

The stakes are al­ways high at these sum­mits, for host and or­gan­i­sa­tion. Both al­ways have a mu­tu­al, shared in­ter­est in de­liv­er­ing a suc­cess­ful event. That re­mains true of the up­com­ing one, in ways that are at once unique and fa­mil­iar. It’s the first CHOGM of their com­par­a­tive­ly new Ghana­ian Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Shirley Ay­orkor Botch­wey since she as­sumed of­fice in April 2025. Queen Camil­la will be ac­com­pa­ny­ing King Charles III, with all of the roy­al pro­to­col that that en­tails.

How big is the Com­mon­wealth? Pic­ture this. Fi­ji is its east­ern­most coun­try, bend­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al Date Line to ac­com­mo­date all of the is­lands in its arch­i­pel­ag­ic clus­ter. The 1987 sum­mit was in Van­cou­ver, al­most as far west as the Com­mon­wealth gets. Fi­ji to west­ern Cana­da en­com­pass­es 19 out of the 24 stan­dard time zones. And be­sides strad­dling most of the globe, the Com­mon­wealth has one-third of all of its cit­i­zens, 2.7 out of eight bil­lion peo­ple.

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da feel that they’ve been giv­en a gen­er­a­tional op­por­tu­ni­ty of near-glob­al vis­i­bil­i­ty, and be­sides meet­ing the mo­ment as hosts in ear­ly No­vem­ber, they want to hit a six. To cre­ate a strong eco­nom­ic lega­cy from the sum­mit. Ho­tels, restau­rants and oth­er food and taxi op­er­a­tors will reap in­stant ben­e­fit from the sum­mit. Their gov­ern­ment wants far more than that, last­ing much fur­ther down the line.

The Caribbean Pre­mier League win by the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Fal­cons seems to have put a spring in the coun­try’s step. Like their big bat­ter Rah­keem Corn­wall, they seem in­tent on mak­ing sure that ball stays lost when they hit it.