Walking through the corridors and conference rooms of the Eleventh Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), held between 27 April and 22 May 2026 in New York, one could observe a recurring sense of pessimism shaping discussions, mixed with cynicism about the Treaty’s future.

After 16 years without a consensus final document, the central challenge facing the NPT seems less about disagreement on specific issues than about growing doubts over the role and value of the review process itself within an expanding and increasingly complex nuclear order, and amid geopolitical shifts and the renewed prominence of nuclear deterrence in global security policy.

As substantive discussions and progress migrate to other forums, the NPT risks losing its centrality in an expanding global nuclear order.

A record of successes and frustrations

The NPT remains one of the most widely adhered-to security treaties ever negotiated. It slowed the spread of nuclear weapons beyond the gloomy expectations prevalent during the 1960s and it created a legal mandate that justified the strengthening of nuclear safeguards through the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It also established robust norms regarding non-proliferation and the peaceful uses of nuclear technology.

Yet the treaty’s history has always been marked by simultaneous achievements and frustrations. Designed as a three-pillar bargain – non-proliferation in exchange for access to peaceful use of nuclear technology and a commitment by the nuclear-weapon states to pursue nuclear disarmament in good faith – the NPT initially entered into force for a 25-year period. In 1995 it was extended indefinitely and equipped with a strengthened five-year review cycle. Although treaty membership became nearly universal, notable non-members – India, Pakistan, and Israel – remain outside the regime, and disarmament commitments contained in Article VI proved much more difficult to fulfill.

The first review cycle after extension culminated in 2000 with the adoption of the 13 Practical Steps to implement Article VI. Optimism soon faded. The early 2000s brought a series of proliferation and compliance crises, including North Korea’s withdrawal from the NPT and the discovery of clandestine nuclear supply networks. The 2005 Review Conference ended without agreement, foreshadowing deeper fractures. The following years brought new momentum: negotiations with Iran advanced, the United States and Russia agreed on new limits on strategic nuclear weapons, and the 2010 Review Conference concluded with a comprehensive 64-point action plan intended to strengthen implementation across all three pillars. Limited progress followed in subsequent years. Dialogue among nuclear-weapon states intensified, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran was agreed in 2015. Yet the 2015 Review Conference collapsed over disagreements on the establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction (MEWMDFZ).

Failure at the Review Conference did not make the issue disappear. In 2018, the UN General Assembly mandated a parallel institutional process to negotiate a MEWMDFZ. Since then, this process has provided a relatively resilient negotiating framework involving all countries from the region, except Israel, which has so far chosen not to participate. This shift exemplifies a broader pattern: when the NPT review process stalls, political energy migrates elsewhere. The disarmament pillar has followed a similar trajectory. Frustration with the slow pace of disarmament contributed to the negotiation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in 2017, establishing an instrument aimed at creating a legally binding prohibition on all nuclear weapon-related activities.

The 2020 review cycle unfolded in an even more challenging geopolitical environment, marked, inter alia, by the US withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the erosion of the broader arms control architecture. The 2022 Review Conference came close to consensus, but disagreements over the situation at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant prevented the adoption of a final document. Beneath this dispute, however, lay deeper fractures over disarmament, compliance, and regional security.

The 2026 Review Conference: process under strain

By April 2026, the challenge was no longer a single failed conference but the cumulative effect of two review cycles without an agreed outcome and a growing loss of confidence in the purpose and value of the review process itself. The opening sessions already reflected disagreements between the US and Iran over committee leadership, signalling how procedural questions could quickly become substantive fault lines.

To protect the process, Conference President, Ambassador Đỗ Hùng Việt of Vietnam, attempted a different procedural approach. Rather than relying on reports developed through the three Main Committees, he circulated an early “Zero Draft” during the second week. Over the following weeks, the text underwent four revisions, becoming shorter, but also more directive. Topics of debate remained on familiar ground: nuclear disarmament and the need to avoid a nuclear war, safeguards and compliance, entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), expansion of peaceful uses (including small modular reactors), regional security concerns, and the reform of the review process (accountability and transparency). Pressing issues such as emerging technologies and the entanglement of nuclear and conventional domains were mentioned in the Zero Draft – but withdrawn from subsequent versions – in an effort to secure consensus.

Procedural innovation, however, was not enough to bridge substantive divides. Disagreements over the scope and content of the final document were critical obstacles to an agreed outcome. A major point of contention was language referring to compliance with IAEA legal obligations and references to the Iranian nuclear programme, which remained bracketed in the final draft. Yet discontent extended beyond this single issue, as Ambassador Việt’s closing press statement suggested. Facing an almost inevitable veto, he chose not to put the draft to a vote, in part to avoid publicly singling out states as spoilers. The Eleventh Review Conference thus joined 2005, 2015, and 2022 in the growing list of review cycles without a final document.

Sixteen years without consensus and the expansion of the global nuclear order

The problem today is not simply one more failed conference. The NPT has weathered difficult moments before. The deeper concern is that lack of consensus and political will have become a pattern of deadlocks eroding the credibility of the NPT as the cornerstone of the global nuclear order. When progress is not achieved, this cornerstone begins to crack – and as it does, political activity increasingly shifts elsewhere.

This pattern is increasingly visible. Deadlock over the Middle East at the 2015 Review Conference was one driver behind the creation of the UN Conference on a MEWMDFZ; frustration with disarmament commitments led to the TPNW; risk reduction efforts have proliferated in parallel formats like the “P5 process”. Non-proliferation depends on IAEA safeguards that, while anchored in the NPT, operate within their own political and institutional dynamics. Together, these processes both compensate for NPT deadlock and gradually decentre the Treaty as the main forum for setting nuclear norms.

The broader institutional architecture is thus expanding and becoming more fragmented just as the NPT review process stagnates. This is not necessarily negative. Historically, diplomatic processes have always reinforced and complemented one another. Progress in one forum has often compensated for deadlock elsewhere. Yet institutional expansion can also lead to fragmentation and incoherence. If political energy increasingly shifts toward parallel frameworks, the NPT review process risks becoming less central in defining the direction of nuclear governance. But what happens when the cornerstone gradually becomes a smaller part of the structure it is meant to sustain?

The way forward

Predictions of the NPT’s demise have repeatedly underestimated its capacity to absorb shocks and adapt incrementally. The central question this time, however, is not whether the Treaty will survive, but whether states can ensure that it continues to provide political guidance for a nuclear order that is increasingly expanding beyond it, or whether the nuclear order will become fragmented, with different groups of states at odds over the direction to take.

Policymakers should draw at least three lessons from the Eleventh Review Conference. First, resilience must not become an excuse for complacency. The NPT is unlikely to collapse abruptly, but 16 years without consensus should be seen as a warning sign about the lack of political will behind sustaining it. Second, states should invest more consciously in connecting parallel processes to the NPT framework rather than allowing them to evolve in isolation. This could be done, for example, through interactive formats in which progress from other forums is reported to the NPT plenum. As of now, such reporting is largely confined to thematic side-events with limited participation and discussion. Third, efforts to reform the review process should be sustained and expanded, including by exploring more flexible outcome formats, such as partial reports that can at least capture “islands” of consensus.

The 2026 NPT RevCon may have ended without a final document, but the nuclear order still moves with its calendar. In September, the IAEA will host its 70th General Conference and, during October and November, New York will host the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, the seventh session of the MEWMDFZ Conference, and the first Review Conference of the TPNW. Each of these forums offers opportunities for progress – and to lay the ground for the new NPT review cycle, starting in 2028. Yet these prospects remain grim. As long as broader multilateral cooperation remains weak, the NPT risks becoming another casualty of great-power rivalry. Whether these opportunities can be seized depends more on a shift in the broader contextual environment: without a broader recommitment to multilateralism, the NPT risks being undermined by the very geopolitical fractures it was designed to help contain.

The European Leadership Network itself as an institution holds no formal policy positions. The opinions articulated above represent the views of the authors rather than the European Leadership Network or its members. The ELN aims to encourage debates that will help develop Europe’s capacity to address the pressing foreign, defence, and security policy challenges of our time, to further its charitable purposes.

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