This came at a pivotal moment for oceans and seas, as the political landscape is evolving rapidly, shaped by renewed ambitions such as the emerging European Ocean Pact and its dedicated Ocean Research & Innovation Strategy. The event provided a timely space to reflect on how the SRIA can be updated under the framework of key policy priorities and research domains, building on existing strengths while responding to emerging challenges and opportunities, ensuring it remains a robust framework for a sustainable, resilient, competitive blue economy.

Bringing together around 50 participants, the workshop gathered a rich and diverse group of representatives from research, policy, industry, finance and environmental organisations that spanned different countries and sea basins. This diversity was not accidental: it reflects the multi-actor, cross-sector and transnational approach the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership actively seeks to foster. The programme combined keynote interventions, high-level panels and interactive breakout sessions covering core themes for the SRIA update, including FAIR data, digitalisation and Digital Twins of the Ocean, public–private and cross-sectoral cooperation, blue finance, socio-economic and resilience data, multi-use infrastructure, maritime spatial planning, and sea-basin cooperation. 

Participants highlighted, among other pressing topics, the need to move from pilots to scalable solutions, strengthen science–policy interfaces, improve data and socio-economic evidence, ensuring that innovation delivers tangible benefits for communities and ecosystems alike, and align public funding with private investment. Together, these discussions provided concrete thematic inputs and implementation-oriented insights, laying the foundations for a robust, inclusive and actionable SRIA that can effectively support Europe’s sustainable blue economy transition in a fast-changing policy context and continue to respond to policy needs at the sea-basin, European and global levels.

The foresight, co-organised with ECORYS' support, is the first of the activities within a structured process to update the Strategic Research Innovation Agenda, with the revised document planned for publication in 2027.