Overview   Data

IMDIS 2026 will take place in Split, Croatia, from 30 November to 3 December 2026, organised by the Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries (IOF) in collaboration with SeaDataNet AISBL, IFREMER, MARIS, NOC and INGV, many of whom are long-standing EMODnet partners. The conference will bring together experts from across the marine data community to showcase advances in data infrastructures, interoperable systems, tools and platforms, and the transformation of marine data into knowledge and decision-support products.

The World Conference on Marine Biodiversity (WCMB) 2026 will take place from 17–20 November 2026 in Bruges, Belgium, with organisation led by the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ). This flagship global event will gather scientists, policymakers, and stakeholders to explore the latest research, innovations, and solutions for marine biodiversity observations, data, conservation and sustainable ocean management. The Call for Abstracts is open until 17 March 2026 (23:59 CET), and registration is now available via the WCMB 2026 registration portal, with early-bird rates valid until 18 June 2026. Find all submission details and updates on the WCMB 2026 website.

The 7th edition of the World Conference on Marine Biodiversity (WCMB 2026) takes place in Bruges, Belgium, from 17 to 20 November 2026, organised by the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ). Held roughly midway through the UN Ocean Decade, the conference brings together scientists, policymakers and stakeholders to discuss the state of marine biodiversity and identify what still needs to be tackled by the end of the Decade.

EMODnet Biology will organise a three-day Data Management training workshop for Black Sea data providers from 28 to 30 October 2026 in Constanța, Romania. The course will focus on preparing and standardising marine biological datasets using Darwin Core, supporting their publication in EMODnet Biology. Researchers and data managers are invited to bring their own datasets and contribute to improving data availability for the Black Sea region.

The call for challenges for Ocean Hackathon® 2026 is now open, inviting innovators, researchers, and organisations to shape the future of the blue economy. EMODnet Secretariat's Angeliki Karampourouni and Matteo Mikos co-presented EMODnet's service offer at the online warm-up sessions in April ahead of the event taking place from 16–18 October 2026 across multiple locations worldwide. The hackathon will bring together multidisciplinary teams to transform marine data into practical, prototype solutions addressing ocean sustainability and real-world needs. Submit your challenge before 30 May.

On the morning of 5 and 6 October 2026, EMODnet Biology will host a workshop to help EU-funded biodiversity projects ensure their outputs become available via EMODnet Biology. The sessions will provide guidance on biodiversity data standards and product creation, and discuss how project outputs can feed into the EMODnet Biology service.

Blue Tech Europe 2026, held on 21–22 April at Sorbonne Université in Paris, focused on Marine Observing Technologies and strengthening Europe’s autonomy in sensor and marine technology development, while addressing gaps in ocean observation coverage. Following the conference, EMBRC and participating organisations — including MARCO-BOLO, TRICUSO, OBAMA-NEXT, BioGeoSea, SOOP, EMODnet and the European Commission — developed five policy recommendations for strengthening marine observation and technological innovation in Europe, published on 15 September. Read the policy recommendations:

https://www.embrc.eu/documents-and-resources/ 

On 8 September 2026, EMODnet’s Head of Secretariat joined EMODnet Geology partners at the EuroGeoSurveys Strategic Research & Innovation Agenda (SRIA) workshop in Brussels. Bringing together geological experts, policymakers and Geological Service for Europe project stakeholders, the workshop discussed future priorities for its Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda. The discussions included the role of geoscience data and information to inform research, innovation and policy implementation in the areas of climate resilience, risk mitigation and adaptation, and the need for interoperable geoscience data and information, interconnected with EU services including EMODnet and EDITO.

On 10th September, the EMODnet Secretariat represented EMODnet at the launch of the UN Ocean Decade socioeconomic data sharing guidelines, spear-headed by the Decade Coordination Office for Ocean Data Sharing. The guidelines provide high-level principles and practical resources to support responsible, open and transparent sharing of marine socio-economic data. EMODnet contributed to the guidelines as a good practice for a regional data service delivering cross-border, multi-parametric interoperable data for the European and Global Digital Ocean Ecosystem, also giving examples from EMODnet’s service offer, noting that EMODnet works with thousands of data providers, including Eurostat and also directly with nations, including for EMODnet’s European National Maritime Spatial Plan layer for which EMODnet works directly with Member States to transform MSP information into geospatial data layers. EMODnet also referred to another EU service, the European Blue Economy Observatory which provides further socio-economics data and indicators Explore the Marine Socio-Economic Data Sharing Guidelines:

https://oceandecade.org/publications/ocean-decade-socio-economic-data-sharing-guidelines/ 

https://blue-economy-observatory.ec.europa.eu/index_en 

EDITO has launched the EDITO Academy, a new learning programme designed to help users make the most of the European Digital Twin Ocean, including the in situ marine data that EMODnet feeds into the platform. Free hands-on training sessions, webinars, tutorials and guided walkthroughs are on offer, from general platform familiarisation to the technical "Building with EDITO" series for researchers, data scientists, modellers and developers wanting to build and deploy their own applications. The first course, "EDITO Building Blocks: How to Navigate and Integrate Data in the EDITO DataLab," will take place on 5 November 2026. Register now:

https://www.edito.eu/european-digital-twin-ocean-edito-academy/ 

Abyssal Claims, an independent non-commercial, open-data project, brings together deep-sea mining claims, offshore infrastructure and environmental information on an interactive 3D globe. EMODnet Human Activities and Physics provide harmonised data on offshore licences, wind farms, submarine cables, maritime boundaries and underwater noise, accessed machine-to-machine and automatically synchronised. Read the full use case here:

https://emodnet.ec.europa.eu/en/use-case/abyssal-claims-open-map-placing-emodnet-data-beside-deep-sea-mining-claims 

EMODnet’s long-standing Terms of Use was recently updated to extend the existing Disclaimer to provide further clarity on disclaimers of Warranties and Limitation of Liability. This follows dialogue with EMODnet’s Associated Partnership which includes the private sector and with the UN Ocean Decade Corporate Data Group, with the intention to further reduce the barriers to (ocean) data sharing. Specifically, the disclaimer now includes the CC-BY 4.0 Disclaimer of Warranties and Limitation of Liability (Section 5) and applies to EMODnet data products and all data shared under the CC BY 4.0 license. Read the full EMODnet Terms of Use:

https://emodnet.ec.europa.eu/en/terms-use-emodnet-online-services-data-and-data-products 

On 10 September 2026, EMODnet will speak at the UN Ocean Decade Coordination Office for Ocean Data Sharing (DCO-ODS) webinar on new Socio-economic Data Sharing Guidelines. Kate Larkin, Head of the EMODnet Secretariat, will join fellow experts to discuss the importance of advancing access to and sharing of socio-economic ocean data. The guidelines were developed by DCO-ODS, with input from EMODnet and wider experts and provide a foundational framework for strengthening global socio-economic data-sharing practices.

EMODnet has delivered a major milestone for the EDITO Data Lake, with all of EMODnet data collections now seamlessly integrated through fully automated synchronisation. This ensures continuous access to the latest available, trusted in situ marine data from EMODnet throughout the EDITO ecosystem, enhancing accessibility and interoperability of Europe’s marine data, on the cloud.

EMODnet welcomes two new Associated Partners (APs) to its network, namely the Izmir Institute of Technology in Türkiye, IZTECH, and DIVR, a Dutch-based recreational diver platform. These bring new, diverse, data including biodiversity and multi-parametric coastal observations to the EMODnet service, together with new stakeholder communities from citizen science to coastal engineering and modelling communities. Check out all of EMODnet's AP profiles on the Portal!

Explore new projections using the Size Spectrum Dynamic Bioclimate Envelope Model (SS-DBEM) of relative biomass change for 18 fish species across the North Atlantic under a high-emissions future (RCP 8.5) and sustainable fishing pressure (F/Fmsy = 1.0). Combining outputs from three biogeochemical models, this dataset reveals where species may gain or lose biomass between 2030 and 2100, offering a long-term perspective on climate-driven spatial shifts in marine ecosystems and fisheries resources.

A new dataset provides a decade of phytoplankton observations from Romanian Black Sea waters, collected between 2006 and 2015 by the National Institute for Marine Research and Development “Grigore Antipa” (NIMRD). The dataset includes more than 24,000 occurrence records and 170,000 associated measurements and is now available through the interconnected EMODnet Biology, EurOBIS and OBIS services.

In July 2026 in Vienna, EMODnet Chemistry celebrated the launch by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of a common platform for collecting data on global plastics monitoring. The evidence-based information on the abundance and impact of marine plastic pollution will also contribute to the Global Partnership on Marine Litter, a multi-stakeholder initiative led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), bringing together all actors working on the prevention and reduction of marine litter and plastic pollution. EMODnet Chemistry's experience in marine litter data management supports both IAEA’s and UNEP’s initiatives.

A newly published paper in Frontiers in Ocean Sustainability presents the multi-level quality control framework developed within EMODnet Chemistry to validate eutrophication-related data (nutrients, chlorophyll and oxygen) across European seas. The paper describes how data originators, data managers and regional coordinators apply three successive levels of quality control, combining automated checks with expert validation, to produce harmonised, FAIR-compliant datasets that support policies such as the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD).

During summer 2026, EMODnet Data Ingestion (DI) kicked off a new phase, with an updated consortium of organisations and experts, led by the CMCC, Italy. This delivers continuity of the existing service, together with strategic evolution of EMODnet’s data ingestion service building on the EMODnet Vision 2035. Going forward, DI will place particular attention on ingesting data from providers with no (or limited) established pipelines to EMODnet. This includes marine environmental and human activities data from the Blue Economy and the wider private sector, coastal and offshore licensing activities, citizen science and other under-represented public sources and emerging observing systems.