UNDP will join governments, international financial institutions and private investors at the 2026 Financing for Development Forum in New York, 20 to 24 April, as the international community works to translate global financing commitments into country-level results.

The 2026 Financing for Development Forum (FfD) opens at United Nations headquarters in New York on 20 April at a critical moment for development finance. Official development assistance fell 7.1 percent in 2024 and declined by a further 23.1 percent in 2025—the steepest annual drop on record. Humanitarian aid dropped 43 percent in 2024. Debt service costs in developing countries have reached 20-year highs, and developing nations face a US$4.3 trillion annual gap in financing for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

At the same time, the central challenge is not simply the availability of capital. Global financial wealth—such as stocks, bonds, cash, bank deposits and investment funds, excluding real estate—is estimated at $305 trillion. Yet too little of this capital reaches the places where it is most needed, and financing flows remain fragmented, short-term and disconnected from national systems and priorities. Closing that gap requires stronger country financing systems, clearer investment pipelines and better alignment between public finance, private investment and national development priorities. That is what this year’s Forum is focused on delivering.

The Forum convenes in the wake of last year's Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), held in Sevilla, where Member States adopted the Compromiso de Sevilla and Spain launched the Sevilla Platform for Action. The Platform brings together 130 initiatives spanning tax reform, debt restructuring, climate finance, private investment alignment and domestic resource mobilization, representing a concrete global commitment to financing reform. The scale of that challenge is documented in the 2026 Financing for Sustainable Development Report, published earlier this month by the United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on Financing for Development, of which UNDP is a member. FfD Forum 2026 is the moment to demonstrate that those commitments are translating into results on the ground.

“FfD 2026 is an opportunity to demonstrate how the commitments made in Sevilla are being translated into results at the country level, where budgets are under pressure, fiscal space is shrinking and the margin for delay is gone,” said Tom Beloe, Director of UNDP's Sustainable Finance Hub. “The evidence is clear: countries that strengthen financing systems, build investable pipelines and align public and private capital around national priorities are seeing results. The Forum must build on this momentum and define what is required to scale it.”

UNDP arrives at the Forum as a key implementation partner for Sevilla Platform for Action initiatives, with active roles across multiple initiative tracks. These include the expanded Tax Inspectors Without Borders (TIWB) programme, the Public Finance for SDGs Collaborative, the Recovery and Resilience Financing Platform co-launched with Spain, and the ImpactWorks Alliance.

Country results illustrate what integrated financing approaches can achieve in practice. In Colombia, reforms linked to the country's Integrated National Financing Framework (INFF) have influenced more than $89 billion in SDG-aligned public budgets. In Bangladesh, integrating climate into national budget systems contributed to securing $1.4 billion in International Monetary Fund financing. In Nigeria, INFF-backed tax reforms are targeting an increase in the tax-to-GDP ratio from roughly 10 percent toward 18 percent. In Indonesia, UNDP support helped develop a sustainable debt market exceeding $10 billion while aligning $6 billion in public finance with climate and SDG priorities.

These results reflect a deliberate approach: helping countries build financing systems that align public budgets, private investment and development cooperation within a single, nationally led strategy. Today, 86 countries are implementing INFFs with UNDP support, including more than 50 fragile and crisis-affected contexts where the financing gap is most acute. Since 2022, countries supported by UNDP have mobilized or aligned more than $920 billion in public and private finance for the SDGs. The TIWB initiative has generated $2.67 billion in additional tax revenue for developing countries since 2015, returning an estimated $125 for every dollar invested.

As the international community gathers in New York, UNDP's presence across more than 170 countries and territories and its longstanding partnerships with ministries of finance, central banks and regulators position it to help translate what is agreed at the Forum into concrete national action.