Misleading Claims Portrayed the NATO Summit in Tirana as Cancelled

In August 2024, Prime Minister Edi Rama announced that Albania would host the NATO summit in 2027, one of the most important international events the country would have the opportunity to host. However, plans for the event have occasionally been targeted by disinformation.

The latest instance occurred on 12 November in Dublin, where the ninth European Political Community summit was taking place. Rama confirmed that the NATO summit would not take place the following year, a statement that was portrayed by online media outlets and on social media as the cancellation of the summit and a rejection of Tirana.

“Reuters: NATO says ‘NO’ to Tirana, reason revealed!” appeared in several articles published by online media outlets in Albania, presenting misleading headlines about the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s summit.

However, in its report on 12 November, the international news agency Reuters quoted Prime Minister Edi Rama as saying that no consensus had been reached on the date of the summit and that it would not take place in 2027. Rama went on to add that if a summit were to take place in 2028, it would be held in Tirana.

Rama’s statement to the media from Dublin, published on the Prime Minister’s Office website, also confirms that Albania remains the host of the next NATO summit.

“Of course, Albania is envisaged as the next host of the NATO summit. The issue is that no consensus has been reached on when the summit will take place. It is certain that it will not be in 2027. If there is a summit in 2028, it will take place in Tirana, and there is no doubt about that,” Rama stated.

Beyond the Albanian Prime Minister’s statement, NATO itself has also confirmed that Albania remains the host country of the next summit, in a response to the Reuters news agency.

“The next NATO summit will be held in Albania. A decision on the date has not yet been taken,” a NATO official stated.

The decision to hold the NATO summit in Albania was made in June 2025, during the meeting of heads of state and government of member countries in The Hague. In the joint declaration adopted at the conclusion of the summit, member countries announced that the next meeting would take place in Türkiye in 2026, followed by a meeting in Albania, without specifying the year in which it would be held.

However, in Albania, discussions about the date of the summit were accompanied by the circulation of articles referring to the rejection of Tirana, the cancellation of the summit and the withdrawal of Albania’s right to host it. In other publications, Rama’s statement from Dublin was also presented as an announcement that the summit had been cancelled.

In some publications, the fact that the summit would not take place in 2027 was presented as a consequence of a clashwith US President Donald Trump, while in others it was presented as the result of a loss of confidence in Albania due to corruption and the government’s links to crime.

Some of the reporting in the Albanian media focused solely on the news that the summit would not take place the following year. The other part of Rama’s statement, concerning the possibility of holding the meeting in Albania in another year, was overlooked.

Discussions among NATO member countries about the next summit had been under way for months. The question was whether the summit would take place in 2027 or in another year, while Albania had already been designated as the host country.

In July 2026, at the conclusion of the NATO summit in Ankara, the Alliance’s Secretary General, Mark Rutte, also confirmed that the next summit would take place in Albania, but clarified that its date had not yet been determined.

On 3 November, just nine days before Rama’s statement from Dublin, the Albanian Prime Minister met with Rutte in Brussels. Following the meeting, the Ministry of Defence announced that the decision to hold the next NATO summit in Tirana had been reconfirmed, but no date had been specified.

The summits organised by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, known as NATO summits, bring together the heads of state and government of member countries to discuss security issues and make decisions about the future direction of the Alliance.

Hosting such a meeting in Albania would mark an important milestone in the country’s relations with its allies since joining NATO in 2009.

Earlier, in June 2026, the Reuters news agency reported that plans to hold the summit in Albania in 2027 had been called into question due to opposition from the US administration and dissatisfaction among some member countries over Albania’s low defence spending.

In November, the international media outlet Politico reported that the reasons for the allies’ reluctance to hold the summit in 2027 also included the high costs of such a meeting and concerns that it could give the US President another opportunity to criticise the Alliance.

However, none of these reports announced a decision by NATO to withdraw Albania’s right to host the summit or a decision by US President Donald Trump to block it from taking place in Tirana.

The news that the NATO summit would not be held in Tirana the following year also prompted reactions in Albanian politics, with the opposition reminding Rama of the promise he had made two years earlier.

Democratic Party MP Tritan Shehu claimed that the cancellation of the summit was linked to a loss of confidence in Albania due to corruption and the government’s links to crime. However, these were accusations made by the opposition MP, rather than reasons made public by NATO for the summit not taking place in 2027.

Democratic Party MP Flamur Noka took a similar approach, publishing a video on Instagram in which he juxtaposed Rama’s earlier statement about hosting the summit in 2027 with his latest statement from Dublin.

“Now all he has left to promise is the Surrel Summit,” Noka wrote, mocking the Prime Minister’s “unfulfilled promise”.

Monitoring by Amfora Media’s Resilience Observatory shows that, in addition to claims about the cancellation of the NATO summit in Albania, various interpretations of the reasons for it not taking place in 2027 also circulated in online media. The reported opposition from the US administration was presented as a decision by President Donald Trump to block the summit, while political accusations of corruption and a loss of confidence in the Albanian government were presented as explanations for this development.

Despite these claims, NATO’s official documents contradict these publications, and statements by its representatives to date confirm that Albania remains the host country of the next summit. What has yet to be determined is when the meeting will take place.