Record numbers of delegates have been registered for this year’s COP28 climate summit in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), making it potentially the largest in COP history by some distance.

More than 97,000 participants have badges to attend this year’s Conference of the Parties (COP) in Dubai in person.

This is almost twice the number that travelled to Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt for COP27 last year, the previous largest in an almost 30-year history of summits.

For the first time in COP history, every single delegate has been named in the participant lists (not including support staff).

Previous COPs have typically seen thousands of “overflow” participants in which countries and UN agencies could nominate delegates without their names appearing on their official lists. 

Also named this year are “host country guests” – those receiving badges as guests of the UAE.

Recipients include former UK prime ministers Boris Johnson and Tony Blair, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, CEO and chairman of French energy giant EDF Luc Rémont and NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg.

This year, also for the first time, 3,000 “virtual-only” participants are named, which takes the overall provisional delegate total for COP28 to more than 100,000.

Unsurprisingly, the UAE has the largest-ever registered delegation of any country, with 4,409 badges. This is followed by Brazil with 3,081 and then China and Nigeria, who have both issued 1,411 badges.

Update: This article was updated on 02/12/2023 to include the full number of support staff (which were not included in the Excel files), which takes the overall total number of participants from 84,000 to more than 100,000.

Read more: carbonbrief.org

Photo: carbonbrief.org