The money exists. It isn’t reaching the coast.

The inaugural Blue Finance in 2025 convened over 200 people from across finance, government, industry and ocean sustainability, and made the macro case: the ocean is one of the world’s great assets, yet it draws a fraction of the investment its recovery requires.

That case is made. The question for 2026 is more practical, and more uncomfortable. Why isn’t the capital moving?

Money accumulates at the top, in capital markets and institutional portfolios. The recovery has to happen somewhere else entirely — on the water, in catchments, along the coast. Public funding is under pressure. Restoration is well funded in principle and poorly funded in practice. And almost nobody is financing the thing that would help most: reducing the pressures causing the damage in the first place.

Blue Finance 2026 follows the journey money has to make — from institutional capital markets to the coast itself, and to the people and businesses, large and small, whose decisions determine what actually happens in the water. It asks how the UK reshapes that pathway well enough to become a model others follow.

Four tracks, one journey

A · Scaling the market — building credible, investable markets for marine nature. Marine net gain, blue carbon, and whether a marine credit survives an investor’s diligence.

B · Blended finance and catalytic capital — making public and philanthropic money work harder. First-loss, guarantees, and why so many structures never reach close.

C · The last mile — getting finance to communities, SMEs and the coast. The scale mismatch nobody has solved.

D · Pressure reduction and supply chains — financing the stopping of damage. A different route to the coast: not investment, but procurement.

The day

One day, three rooms, around 200 people. Keynotes and plenary panels in the lecture theatre; parallel tracks, practitioner-led workshops and roundtables alongside. An investor–developer lounge open through the afternoon.

And Meet the Projects — coastal and marine ventures pitching directly to the people who can fund them, immediately before lunch, so the conversations carry on where they should.

The day closes with an evening reception.