From long-acting prevention and new treatment strategies to artificial intelligence, community-led care and trans advocacy, AIDS 2026 offered a glimpse of where the global HIV response may be heading—and a reminder that scientific progress matters only when people can access it.
AIDS 2026 in Rio: Science, Community, and the Future of the HIV Response
Arrival at AIDS 2026 Entrance / Yale LGBTQ Center Director Samuel Byrd and HIV Cure Scientist Dr. Adam Ward
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL — From July 26–31, thousands of researchers, healthcare professionals, advocates, people living with HIV, policymakers and community leaders gathered in Rio de Janeiro for AIDS 2026, the 26th International AIDS Conference.
This year’s theme—Rethink. Rebuild. Rise.—reflected a global HIV response at a complicated moment. More than four decades of research have transformed what an HIV diagnosis can mean, while new prevention and treatment options continue to expand. At the same time, funding reductions, political instability, stigma and growing attacks on LGBTQ+ and other marginalized communities threaten access to many of those advances.
Rio provided a particularly meaningful setting for that conversation. Brazil was the first low- or middle-income country to provide free access to highly active antiretroviral treatment in the late 1990s and today offers HIV testing, treatment, condoms, PEP and PrEP through its Unified Health System. Brazil has also participated in major studies of long-acting HIV prevention technologies, including injectable cabotegravir and lenacapavir.
IAS reported that approximately 7,500 people participated in AIDS 2026. The formal programme included eight pre-conferences, 48 invited-speaker sessions, 42 oral abstract sessions, 62 satellite sessions, 19 workshops, more than 2,100 poster presentations and 260 e-posters. Alongside that scientific programme, the Global Village hosted more than 220 community activities, ranging from workshops and films to advocacy, performances, art and networking.
The scale made it impossible for any individual participant to experience everything. What follows is therefore not intended as a comprehensive review of AIDS 2026. Instead, it highlights several of the scientific, community and LGBTQ-focused conversations that stood out during the week in Rio.
The Science to Watch
The scientific programme included developments across HIV treatment, prevention, cure and vaccine research.
Among the studies IAS highlighted after the conference were the first detailed results from ISLEND-1 and ISLEND-2, examining once-weekly oral islatravir and lenacapavir as a potential complete weekly HIV treatment regimen. Researchers also reported on the individual referred to as the “Kansas City patient,” who remained in HIV remission for 14 months without antiretroviral treatment following a CCR5Δ32 stem-cell transplant.
AIDS 2026 brought researchers and clinicians together to share emerging findings across HIV prevention, treatment, cure, and vaccine research—setting the stage for the science to watch.
Other highlighted research examined the impact of recent PEPFAR disruptions on HIV treatment for children, emerging shortages of dual HIV and syphilis rapid tests, early implementation of twice-yearly injectable lenacapavir for HIV prevention across eight African countries, and progress in HIV vaccine research using an experimental mRNA-LNP platform.
For community organizations, one of the most consequential themes was not simply that more prevention technologies are becoming available. It was the emerging possibility of choice.
AIDS 2026 offered opportunities to connect with HIV scientists from around the world, including Dr. Adam Ward and Dr. Sherazaan D. Ismail.
Daily PrEP, event-driven strategies in some settings, long-acting injections and future options could allow people to choose prevention that works with their lives rather than forcing everyone into a single model. The challenge will be ensuring that these breakthroughs reach the populations that could benefit from them. IAS itself emphasized that innovations such as lenacapavir will have meaningful impact only if they are affordable, accessible and available at scale, especially in lower-income settings and among communities most affected by HIV.
Artificial Intelligence and the Future of HIV Services
Another emerging conversation at AIDS 2026 centered on a technology affecting nearly every sector of society: artificial intelligence.
The conference included sessions titled “AI and HIV: Who owns the future of public health?” and “The future of HIV service delivery is…simplification, self-care, integration, and AI in practice.” Their presence in the programme reflects a shift from asking whether AI will affect healthcare to asking how it should be used, who benefits from it and who gets to make those decisions.
AI-assisted HIV tools could expand access and support clinical decisions—but their success depends on privacy, equity, accuracy and trust.
Ahead of the conference, IAS also convened Beyond the Hype: What AI Really Means for the HIV Response, examining AI tools already being applied in resource-limited settings. Examples included an AI-supported platform delivering sexual and reproductive health, HIV and mental-health information through WhatsApp in African countries, alongside South African work explicitly focused on placing community voices at the center of ethical AI development.
The potential is significant. Digital and AI-supported systems could help people locate services, navigate prevention options, receive information privately, identify gaps in care and reduce some of the administrative burden on overstretched health systems. IAS has also pointed to broader digital innovations—including telemedicine, online ordering and self-screening—as part of efforts to bring services closer to people.
But HIV also makes the risks particularly clear.
Information about HIV status, sexual behavior, gender identity or sexual orientation can be extraordinarily sensitive. An AI system may be fast and technically sophisticated while still being untrustworthy if people do not understand where their data go, who controls the technology or whether an algorithm was designed with people like them in mind.
For LGBTQ and transgender communities, these questions become even more important. Poorly designed systems can reproduce biases already present in healthcare. Digital services can increase privacy for someone reluctant to enter a stigmatizing clinic—but they can also create new forms of surveillance or exclusion.
The most promising direction emerging from the conversation was therefore not AI instead of people. It was technology designed alongside clinicians, community organizations and the people expected to use it.
In HIV care, smarter solutions will ultimately depend on something technology cannot manufacture on its own: trust.
The AIDS 2026 Poster Exhibition
Beyond the large scientific sessions, the poster exhibition provided a closer view of what HIV prevention and care look like in particular communities.
I documented 22 posters focused on LGBTQ+ and gender-minority populations, spanning research from Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe and North America.
Across many of them, a recurring message emerged: an effective medical intervention only works when people can safely access it, trust the people providing it and recognize themselves in the services being offered.
More than 2,100 posters brought researchers from around the world together to share emerging HIV science at AIDS 2026.
In India, one-stop centers serving transgender people brought HIV and sexual-health services together with mental-health support, treatment navigation and connections to social services. Research in countries where same-sex sexual activity remains criminalized showed the importance of confidential testing, self-testing, peer navigation and community-led approaches.
Several studies examined PrEP among transgender and nonbinary communities. Research from Thailand, Argentina and Brazil highlighted barriers including stigma, cost, limited provider knowledge, privacy concerns and questions about how prevention options interact with gender-affirming care. Participants consistently called for clearer information, meaningful choice and services designed around their actual healthcare needs.
Technology also appeared in practical ways. One project used outreach through Grindr to connect LGBTQ users with a WhatsApp navigation service where a real person could answer questions about testing, PrEP and PEP and help people reach services.
Other posters broadened the discussion beyond medication altogether, examining HPV vaccination and cancer prevention, housing, migration, substance-use support, relationships and intimacy, older transgender adults, delayed testing among young people, political backlash and HIV criminalization.
Taken together, these studies shifted the question from “Why aren’t people using the services available?” toward a more useful one:
What must institutions change so those services become genuinely accessible?
Where Science Met Community
If the scientific programme demonstrated what is becoming possible, the Global Village showed what those possibilities look like once they encounter communities.
The Global Village brought together more than 220 community-led sessions, performances, workshops, exhibits, and networking spaces at AIDS 2026.
Open to conference participants and the public, the Global Village brought together activists, artists, community organizations, researchers and advocates through workshops, performances, film screenings, NGO booths, networking zones, marketplace spaces and the Youth Pavilion. IAS described it as a place where communities from around the world could connect, share and learn from one another.
That distinction mattered.
Visitors to the Global Village shared personal reflections on living with and responding to HIV, turning the conference space into a place for storyte
The atmosphere was less like moving through a conventional academic conference and more like moving between a community center, arts festival, health fair and international activist gathering.
One installation invited attendees to answer a deceptively simple question: “What’s your story with HIV?” Handwritten responses spoke about resilience, self-care, friendship, love, empowerment and finding meaning in life.
Elsewhere, prevention advocacy was intentionally playful. At “Let’s Gossip About PrEP!”, advocates from countries including Kenya and Uganda discussed what communities are actually saying about new PrEP options—including the excitement, rumors and misconceptions surrounding lenacapavir.
Rather than treating misinformation as something experts simply needed to correct, the discussion asked more useful questions: Where are people hearing these messages? Who do they trust? And how should community advocates respond?
“Let’s Gossip About PrEP!” brought advocates from multiple countries together to discuss community questions, myths, and new prevention choices.
That approach was visible elsewhere in the Village as well. Brazilian LGBTQ HIV outreach combined drag, humor, sexuality, performance and prevention messages about PrEP and PEP. Advocacy installations warned that “Fund PrEP Saves Lives” and drew attention to the consequences of cuts to HIV programmes.
Scientific breakthroughs and political realities existed side by side.
Art and activism filled the Global Village, where community advocates used bold visual storytelling to call for PrEP access, sustained funding, and solidarity.
When Science Became Art
Perhaps no installation captured the spirit of the Global Village better than HIV Unwrapped.
The project pairs HIV scientists with emerging fashion designers and asks them to translate research into garments—turning subjects that might otherwise remain technical or clinical into something visual, emotional and tangible.
At AIDS 2026, HIV Unwrapped debuted 10 garments created by designers from Faculdade Santa Marcelina in São Paulo, alongside another 10 works from an international collection representing Australia, Canada, Fiji, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The designs explored HIV research while engaging themes including immunity, treatment, prevention, stigma, migration, aging, resilience, physical touch and the experience of living with HIV.
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One garment examined stigma around touching people living with HIV. Another drew on migration and displacement. Others explored aging, treatment science and the history of people who publicly disclosed their HIV status during earlier decades of the epidemic.
The exhibition described its mission as bridging the space between science and humanity, and between data and society.
That could just as easily have described the Global Village itself.
Leadership from the Global South
Holding AIDS 2026 in Brazil also created greater space for organizations and advocates whose work can be overshadowed at conferences dominated by institutions from North America and Europe.
That leadership was particularly visible around transgender health, youth, PrEP access and LGBTQ+ advocacy.
Brazilian advocates highlighted community-led HIV work, including networks supporting people living with HIV and trans communities across Brazil.
The Africa-anchored Access Bridge, for example, is working to accelerate equitable access to emerging HIV-prevention products and was represented in the community conversation about lenacapavir. Y+ Kenya, a youth-led organization of young people living with and affected by HIV, brought a youth and community perspective to that same discussion. Access Bridge describes its goal as ensuring that new prevention technologies reach people faster and more equitably, while Y+ Kenya works to ensure young people have meaningful roles in HIV and sexual-health programmes.
Brazilian civil-society organizations were similarly prominent. Displays included the Brazilian Movement of People Living with HIV and AIDS, LGBTQ+ legal and social-service initiatives, and community prevention programmes. The Aliança Nacional LGBTI+, whose work focuses on human rights and full citizenship for LGBTQ+ people in Brazil, was among the organizations represented in materials in the Global Village.
Numerous performers took to the stage to showcase their talent and experiences with HIV.
Trans leadership was also highly visible across the wider conference. GATE – Global Action for Trans Equality hosted a Trans Networking Zone and produced a dedicated roadmap to help transgender and gender-diverse attendees navigate AIDS 2026.
Indigenous knowledge and culture were not separated from the health conversation either. The Global Village included an Indigenous Peoples Networking Zone, described by IAS as a place to share ancestral knowledge, organize and influence the global HIV response.
Those spaces reinforced an important distinction: communities were not present simply to be consulted about research conducted elsewhere. They were producing knowledge, designing interventions, leading organizations and challenging the assumptions of larger institutions.
The Impulse area showed how HIV prevention marketing can be culturally relevant, visually engaging, and accessible to key populations, including LGBTQ communities.
What LGBTQ Orgs Can Take Home
For LGBTQ centers and other community organizations, many of the most useful lessons from AIDS 2026 were not highly technical.
A once-a-month PrEP study highlighted at AIDS 2026 reflects growing efforts to expand prevention choices beyond daily medication.
Prevention options are becoming more flexible. Long-acting technologies could change how people think about PrEP and treatment. AI may help make information and services easier to reach. Digital outreach can find people whom conventional systems miss.
But nearly every promising innovation raised the same underlying question:
Can people actually use it?
That means thinking about affordability, stigma, privacy, language, disability, immigration status, gender-affirming care, mental health, housing and whether a person trusts the institution asking them to walk through its doors.
It also means recognizing the role LGBTQ+ organizations can play as translators and connectors. Community centers do not need to become HIV clinics to make a difference. They can help people understand changing prevention options, normalize testing, counter misinformation, connect community members with affirming providers and ensure that trans and LGBTQ+ voices are present when institutions design new health programmes.
The science of HIV continues to change rapidly.
AIDS 2026 made an equally strong case that the future of the response will depend on who is invited to shape what comes next.
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