In Oslo, a ship lives inside a museum. The Fram was built in the 1890s with a rounded hull, so that instead of being crushed by Arctic ice, it would be lifted by it and carried along. A couple of weeks ago, the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership community sat on board it, and the significance of the setting was impossible to ignore. A Partnership created to support research focused on the ocean met aboard a vessel designed to explore it.

A ship like the Fram also needs its crew, people who could not control the ice or the currents, but who knew how to read the conditions and adapt. The Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership works in a similar way. 

On 22 September, at the Research Council of Norway (RCN), the annual face-to-face gathering began. The Partnership’s Regional Portfolio Board members met with the sea-basin nodes, so the Atlantic Ocean, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea were all represented. The Secretariat implementing the Regional Portfolio’s Call for Expressions of Interest shared the outcomes so far of the two waves of calls launched in July and September 2026, and the group brainstormed ways to attract more applications. The conversation also covered ties with the Mission Ocean Lighthouses as well as the Partnership's international role as a Decade Implementing Partner of the UN Ocean Decade. That evening, the entire Partnership delegation in Oslo took to the water for a cruise on the Oslofjord and heard firsthand about the fjord's environmental status and the efforts to restore it. 

If the nodes are the lookouts, the Steering Committee sets the direction and has to keep adjusting it as the landscape evolves. On 23 September, the Minister of Fisheries and Ocean Policy of Norway, Marianne Sivertsen Næss, opened the Steering Committee meeting. The Partnership has entered its third and last cycle, an updated Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda is in the making, and Horizon Europe will soon give way to the 10th Framework Programme. Members of the Steering Committee discussed the Partnership's future under FP10, which is expected to significantly reduce the number of European Partnerships. 

A presentation by Nial McDonough from Ireland’s Marine Institute also covered the Irish Presidency of the EU Council’s activities to maintain momentum for ocean-related action. In this context, European ocean policy is undergoing significant renewal. Representatives from the European Commission outlined ongoing developments, including work on the future European Ocean Research and Innovation Strategy, expected later this year, while Milen Baltov, a member of the Ocean Board, spoke about how the recently proposed European Ocean Pact is beginning its journey through the legislative process. A dedicated presentation by the Joint Research Centre underlined the growing importance of accessible, interoperable data for evidence-based policymaking and sustainable ocean management, linking with the Partnership Additional Activity on ocean data exchange.

The meeting was followed by a panel discussion on “The Arctic in a new geopolitical climate”, which broadened the lens from funding structures to the broader political and strategic context in which ocean research occurs. Later that evening, the group swapped the meeting room for the deck of the Fram.

The General Assembly on 24 September naturally culminated some of these discussions. It was opened, in turn, by the RCN Chief Executive Mari Sundli Tveit. As part of the programme, members voted to formally adopt a phasing-out strategy for the Partnership. Discussion groups later provided input for the update of Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda, which will set the course for the Partnership’s research and innovation activities in its final years as well as inform the transition towards future programmes. 

A Partnership this size has many moving parts, so the Assembly offered a good overview. Members heard about the review of the first reporting period, the positive evaluation of the third-phase proposal. All additional activities are fully sailing with the wind: access to research infrastructures, portfolio of projects, thematic annual programming, alignment of monitoring programmes,  and data sharing were on the agenda, as were communication and legacy. The Assembly closed with information on the preliminary results of the third Joint Call, which will be communicated in the coming weeks.

The Fram was built with a goal in mind: to reach somewhere no one had been before. For the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership, the next frontier lies in delivering excellent research and innovation for the ocean economy, and much of what was said in Oslo, from the calls to conversations on positioning, came back to that. An initiative of 79 partners from 32 countries representing five sea basins can only hold that direction if the crew sticks together, keeps reading the sea, and keeps their eyes on the horizon. The meetings in Oslo showed a community that knows where it is going and is committed to getting there together.