World Fire Congress 2026: the future of fire and rescue
Will we be okay?
More than 65 nations came together in London this week for the World Fire Congress. Over two days, the conversations moved from wildfires and flooding to artificial intelligence, building safety, conflict, firefighter health and the lessons of some of the worst disasters communities have experienced.
It was an extraordinary range of subjects, but perhaps that is the point. The job of a fire and rescue service is becoming more complex because the communities and environments in which firefighters work are becoming more complex too.
Climate change is changing the frequency and severity of some of the emergencies services are preparing for. New technologies are creating new opportunities and new risks. Conflict is placing firefighters in circumstances few services were designed to withstand. At the same time, familiar questions about leadership, public trust, prevention, learning and the welfare of firefighters have not gone away.
One question asked during the Congress stayed with us: will we be okay?
There is no simple answer to that. But after two days spent listening to people from across the international fire and rescue community, one thing seemed increasingly difficult to ignore. The risks facing humanity are becoming more connected, while our capacity to deal with them remains profoundly uneven.
This is something FIRE AID encounters in our work around the world. A fire does not become less dangerous because the service responding to it has an ageing appliance. A flood does not wait until a community has sufficient rescue equipment. A road traffic collision presents the same need to reach and release someone quickly whether it happens in a country with significant investment in its emergency services or somewhere where firefighters are working with very little. And yet that difference in capacity is enormous.
The Fire Gap is about more than equipment
We describe this as the Fire Gap. The Fire Gap is the gap between the risks communities face and the resources available to the people expected to protect them. It can be a gap in vehicles or personal protective equipment, but it can also be a gap in training, communications, data, research, specialist knowledge or access to the developments changing modern firefighting. The conversations in London made us think about that gap in a wider way.
There was understandably considerable discussion about technology. Artificial intelligence, connected vehicles, digital fire safety systems and new approaches to understanding wildfire risk offer enormous possibilities. We should be curious about those possibilities. But we should also be asking who gets to benefit from them. If one part of the world is discussing the next generation of firefighting technology while another is struggling to maintain a fire engine that should have been replaced years ago, innovation alone will not make the world safer. The same is true of knowledge.
Some of the most powerful contributions at the Congress came from people carrying lessons that had been purchased at an appalling cost. Grenfell and Hillsborough were discussed not simply as events in British history, but as experiences from which institutions still have a responsibility to learn. Lord Andy Roe spoke about leadership, ethics, evidence and the importance of being prepared to tell the truth. Bishop James Jones and families affected by major tragedies brought the conversation back to the people who live with the consequences when institutions fail. This raises a difficult question for an international fire community. What do we owe each other when a lesson has already been learned through sacrifice?
The Syrian delegation brought a different perspective to the same question of responsibility. They spoke about firefighters working in conflict, and about what happens when the people arriving to save lives are themselves exposed to attack. It is an issue that has become increasingly difficult to ignore. Firefighters are protected as civilians under international humanitarian law unless they directly participate in hostilities, yet emergency responders continue to work in environments where the distinction between responding to an incident and becoming caught up in the conflict can become dangerously thin.
We see echoes of this in Ukraine, where firefighters and rescue workers may arrive at the scene of an attack knowing that a further strike could follow. It raises uncomfortable questions for the wider fire community about whether the rules intended to protect emergency responders are being respected, how attacks on fire and rescue professionals are documented, and what responsibility sits with the international community when those protections fail.
Placed after Grenfell and Hillsborough, the connection is not that these events are the same. It is that they all force institutions to confront what happens when people who depend on public protection are failed, and what we do with the lessons that follow. Some of those lessons come through inquiry and evidence. Others are being learned in real time, under conditions no service would choose. Either way, they are too valuable to remain where they were learned.
If an investigation, disaster or tragedy in one country reveals something that could save firefighters or members of the public somewhere else, allowing that knowledge to stop at a national border makes little sense. We should not need another tragedy in another country to discover the same thing.
That principle extends beyond major incidents. There is extraordinary knowledge sitting within fire and rescue services around the world, developed through decades of responding to very different risks. Firefighters operating through the war in Ukraine are learning things about emergency response under damaged infrastructure and sustained attack that most services will thankfully never have to learn firsthand. Countries facing increasingly severe wildfires are developing knowledge that is becoming relevant to places where wildfire was once considered a distant risk. Services responding to floods, earthquakes and rapid urban growth all hold experience that others can use. No country has all the answers. Increasingly, no country even faces only its own risks.
Partnership builds resilience
For FIRE AID, this gets to the heart of why international partnership matters. Since 2012, our network has helped move equipment, knowledge, training and expertise between fire and rescue services. The aim is not to reproduce one country's fire service somewhere else. Local services understand their communities, their risks and their operating environment. The task is to make sure that expertise is matched by the resources and opportunities people need to do their jobs safely and effectively.
It also means thinking much more seriously about prevention. Fire and rescue services are very good at responding when something has already gone wrong. Much of the international system works in the same way. Money, attention and political urgency arrive when the flood has happened, the building has burned or the disaster is already on our screens.
The harder question is what we are prepared to do before that moment.
This is where the Fire Gap becomes about more than equipment. Investment in capable local fire and rescue services is investment in resilience. A service with the right equipment, training, information and relationships is better able to stop an emergency becoming a catastrophe. It protects lives, but it also protects homes, businesses, infrastructure, livelihoods and the ability of a community to recover.
What happens next matters
A charity or a congress cannot close the Fire Gap on its own. What it can do is bring together people who are dealing with different versions of the same problem, and create the relationships through which knowledge, equipment and experience can move. For FIRE AID, this is where international partnership becomes practical. We have seen what can happen when fire and rescue services share what they have, whether that is equipment, training, technical knowledge or simply the time to work through a problem together.
As the World Fire Congress closes in London, we would like to thank the National Fire Chiefs Council for bringing more than 65 nations together and creating the space for these conversations. The Congress now passes to Dubai Civil Defence, who will host the next World Fire Congress in 2028.
Dubai Civil Defence has been an important part of our work, supporting fire and rescue services around the world and particularly those operating with fewer resources despite facing many of the same risks. Their support has helped equipment, knowledge and expertise reach services that can put them to use.
We look forward to meeting again in Dubai. More importantly, we look forward to what can be achieved together between now and then.
