BRUSSELS, Nov 12 (Reuters) - NATO will not hold a summit in Albania next year despite previous plans to do so, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said on Thursday.
Reuters reported in June that plans for an alliance summit in Albania next year had been thrown into doubt due to resistance from the Trump administration and dissatisfaction among NATO members with Tirana's low defence spending.
Speaking in Dublin ahead of a gathering of European leaders, Rama said: “The issue is that there is not yet common position on when the summit will happen, for sure not in 2027."
He added: “And in 2028, if it will be a summit, it will be in Tirana."
NATO has been considering ending its recent practice of holding annual summits, a move that could avoid a potentially tense encounter with US President Donald Trump later in his term.
However, diplomats say the alliance could still decide to hold a summit at short notice in 2026 — but not in Tirana.
A NATO official said on Thursday that "the next NATO Summit will be held in Albania. A decision on the date has yet to be made."
In a declaration adopted at the June 2025 NATO summit in The Hague, the alliance’s leaders wrote: “We look forward to our next meeting in Turkiye in 2026 followed by a meeting in Albania.”
But in a declaration adopted at the alliance’s Ankara summit in July of this year, leaders said, “We look forward to our next meeting,” without specifying a time or location for a future summit.
(Reporting by Lili Bayer and Andrew Gray in Brussels and John Irish in Paris; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
