Sold out. The first clear sign of success from this year's European Carbon Farming Summit (ECFS), now in its third edition, which will be held from 17 to 19 March 2026 at the Padova Congress Centre. The event, arranged by the European Credible project together with EIT Climate-KIC and SAE Innova, in collaboration with Veneto Agricoltura, Confagricoltura Veneto and EIT Food, is confirmed as one of the most important events on the European scene concerning climate transition in agriculture, with tickets sold out a week before kick-off.

The central theme of this edition is “Bridging actors to accelerate climate actions”: building links between scientists, policymakers, businesses, farmers and NGOs to effectively accelerate climate actions related to carbon-positive agricultural practices. After previous editions in Valencia in 2024 and Dublin in 2025, the choice of Padova reflects the organisers' desire to root the European debate in the most dynamic local production realities.

A packed programme

The programme covers three days with five plenary sessions, 44 parallel sessions and workshops, poster sessions and numerous networking opportunities. On 17 March, Kirsten Dunlop, CEO of EIT Climate-KIC, will open the event. Two plenary sessions will follow: the first on the role of carbon farming in climate mitigation, biodiversity and sustainable agriculture, featuring Kurt Vandenberghe, Director-General for Climate Action at the European Commission, and Elisabeth Werner, Director-General for Agriculture; the second on carbon market trends and available support mechanisms, with speakers from Danone, Mars, Royal Canin, Deloitte and the European Commission.

On 18 March, the focus will be on technical and cross-cutting issues, starting with an update on European policies with three Commission officials (DG Environment, DG Agriculture, DG Climate), leading up to a plenary session dedicated to risk management: uncertainties in MRV systems, liability for reversals and emerging insurance instruments, involving experts in agricultural resilience. The summit will close on 19 March with a plenary session on the future of carbon farming beyond agriculture, towards forestry, biodiversity and the bioeconomy.

The 44 parallel sessions

The operational heart of the summit consists of 44 parallel sessions, addressing the most practical issues in the sector from a hands-on, interdisciplinary perspective. On the agricultural practices front, a dedicated session will give European farmers a direct platform to share their experiences on soil health, emissions reduction, challenges with certification systems and digital tools, entitled Giving Voice to Farmers: From Practice to Proof in Carbon Farming. A further session explores how improved forest management practices and community carbon forestry initiatives can be integrated into the new CRCF regulatory framework, featuring case studies from Italy and the Nordic countries.

Ample coverage is given to the topic of standards and certification. One session examines how the CRCF regulation can align with international carbon reporting systems, tackling issues of data interoperability, double counting and coordination between national and European levels. Another analyses practical challenges in implementing soil carbon projects, with a direct comparison between CRCF requirements, voluntary market standards and existing methodologies. Particular focus is given to carbon forestry, with a session debunking myths and comparing forestry and agricultural models in terms of permanence, measurability and value creation.

Finance, small farmers, business models and emerging technologies

The issue of financing is at the heart of several sessions. One of these, From Verified Claims to Scaled Action, addresses the lack of a validation infrastructure in Europe for Scope 3 emissions reductions in the agricultural supply chain, exploring solutions such as blended finance, interoperable MRV systems and landscape-level collaboration. Another panel examines how to combine public funds, voluntary and private markets, and biodiversity-related approaches to finance the agricultural transition while avoiding double counting of environmental benefits.
Highly relevant in practical terms is the session dedicated to small European farms, Unlocking European Small Farms' Access to Carbon Markets, which denounces how recent developments in the CRCF have largely ignored the reality of small farmers and suggests, in workshop format, practical solutions for including them in environmental markets in an economically sustainable way.

Among the most innovative topics is the session on artificial intelligence applied to soil carbon monitoring, SCF-TRUSTAI 2026, showing how to combine remote sensing, in situ measurements and machine learning to build reliable and auditable MRV pipelines. Another highlight is the session on Earth Observation technologies for carbon farming, featuring contributions from the European Space Agency and Airbus, which present approaches based on high-resolution satellite imagery to monitor carbon stock variations at the level of individual agricultural particles.

Beyond carbon: biodiversity, wetlands and animal husbandry

The panel Co-Benefits for Whom? addresses a provocative but essential question: who really reaps the co-benefits of carbon farming, biodiversity, water regulation, cultural value, livelihoods, and who bears the costs? Panellists will discuss whether current carbon credit payment systems adequately reflect this distribution of value across time and space, with a particular focus on intergenerational equity and planetary boundaries. The OpenGeoHub Foundation, organiser of the session and leader of the European OGCR project, will also contribute, together with thriveGEO GmbH and Agrosolutions, to the panel From Pilots to Practice: Building a Fair, Farmer-Empowered Carbon Registry for Europe. This interactive workshop explores how the design of an open, geospatial carbon registry can enable credible markets aligned with the CRCF, putting farmers at the centre of the system.

The 2026 edition comes at a crucial time for European climate policy. The voluntary agricultural carbon credit market is still struggling to take off at the prices needed to incentivise large-scale change. The summit offers a unique opportunity to take stock of the progress of the new CRCF regulation, learn from real-world experiences in the field, and define how markets and policies can reinforce each other.

Cover: Padova, Envato image