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ICANN boss: no plans to scrap Oman meeting
ICANN currently has no plans to cancel its 2026 Annual General Meeting, which is due to take place in Muscat, Oman, later this year, according to CEO Kurt Lindqvist.
Speaking at the public forum at ICANN 85 in Mumbai today, Lindqvist responded to a speaker who expressed concerns about the ongoing US-Israel war against Iran, which has seen Iran retaliate against neighbors including Oman.
“We’re obviously aware of the situation, and we’re monitoring it. The Oman meeting is 7 months out, so it’s still quite a long time to go, and a lot of things can change. So, at the moment, we are planning for this to go ahead,” he said.
The Muscat meeting was originally planned for October last year, but was called off due to Israel’s attacks on Iran in June, which affected flight corridors in the region.
Lindqvist added that ICANN always has contingency plans in case a venue becomes inappropriate. Last year, the Muscat meeting was rescheduled to Dublin, Ireland.
It seems likely that if the hostilities in the Middle East have not calmed down by June, ICANN could well pull the plug on Muscat for a second year, giving meeting participants about four months to plan their travel.
Previously, ICANN has relocated meetings due to be held in Puerto Rico and Panama due to hurricane damage and the Zika virus, and several were held entirely online during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Of course not. An internet industry that still insists on meeting in person, regardless of the risk to people or the planet, is hard to defend. We are governing the internet while ignoring the carbon & human cost of how that governance happens, and that position is becoming increasingly untenable.
Even ICANN’s own partial data shows around 5,000 tonnes of CO₂ from ICANN-funded travel in a single year alone, with the majority of unfunded attendees not even counted. Across a decade of three annual meetings, the cumulative impact starts to look like the annual emissions of a small city, largely unmitigated and barely acknowledged.
ICANN needs to think again, and so does the wider industry. NamesCon, CloudFest, ICANN, Domain Days Dubai, London Domain Summit, Nordic Domain Days, WordCamp and APTLD – it is all getting a bit ridiculous now.