Gandhinagar opens South Asia's first World Circular Economy Forum
Bhupender Yadav and Bhupendra Patel inaugurate WCEF2026 at Mahatma Mandir on 15 September. Sitra and India's CPCB are joint organisers. Organisers expect more than 2,000 people from over 65 countries and 125 exhibitors.
Gandhinagar2 min read
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India will open the World Circular Economy Forum on Tuesday at Mahatma Mandir in Gandhinagar, the first time the event has been held in South Asia. Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav and Gujarat chief minister Bhupendra Patel are listed as joint inaugural speakers. The Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra and the Central Pollution Control Board are the joint organisers, with the Union environment ministry and the Gujarat government in support.
A PIB note dated 13 September said more than 2,000 people from over 65 countries are expected. An expo will take 125-plus national and international exhibitors. The theme is "Circular Economy: Transition for People and Prosperity." Main sessions run on 15 and 16 September: four plenaries and 16 parallel meetings on people, business, governance and growth. Accelerator sessions follow on 17 and 18 September in Gandhinagar, online and in other cities. Online entry is free.
What will be on the agenda
The published tracks include the use of machine-learning tools in resource planning, jobs, energy, finance, product rules, industrial reuse, start-ups and youth projects. The language in the programme is broad. The test of the week is whether any session produces a signed finance line or a procurement rule that outlasts the expo.
On 15 September the Board of the 10 Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production, a UN-linked body, meets in person in the same city. That meeting is a sideshow with a narrower mandate than the forum speeches.
Sitra has run WCEF since the first edition a decade ago. This is the tenth. Moving it to Gujarat puts the talking shop next to a state that has sold itself as a manufacturing and renewables host. CPCB's role is the Indian regulatory half of the masthead. Exhibitors were told not to bring brochures or giveaways that become waste. Stand fees were published in rupees and dollars: 2.25 lakh rupees for nine square metres, 4.5 lakh for 18.
What circular means in the official brief
The ministry brief frames circular work as reuse, repair and secondary materials rather than a new slogan. India already has plastic-waste and e-waste rules on paper. Enforcement and secondary-material markets are the usual gap. If the expo shows plants that buy scrap at a contracted price, that is a harder fact than a plenary title.
Tuesday's opening is ceremonial. The useful record after 18 September will be the list of exhibitors who took meetings, any 10YFP board decision dated 15 September, and whether Gujarat or the Union ministry announced a tender that uses secondary content. Until those items exist, the story is the venue, the headcount and the first South Asian edition of a forum that has lived in Europe for most of its life.
