Prime Minister Gaston Browne commended efforts to establish Antigua and Barbuda as a premier Caribbean destination for meetings, incentives, conferences, and events on Tuesday, telling ABS News that the twin-island state is hosting two high-level conferences this week — Caribbean Travel Marketplace and the JCI Conference of the Americas — while preparing for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in November.
The strategic positioning matters. Antigua and Barbuda hosted SIDS-4 in May 2024 and the OAS General Assembly in 2025, and the cumulative effect of that hosting calendar has been to establish the country as a serious operational venue for high-level Caribbean and international gatherings. CHOGM in November will be the largest event the country has hosted in modern times, and the lead-up has involved infrastructure upgrades, security planning, and accommodation pipelines that touch nearly every sector of the economy.
The Browne government won a landslide re-election on May 1, capturing 15 of 17 parliamentary seats in a campaign dominated by economic stability and concern about US visa restrictions. The conference calendar is now operating with the political capital of a fresh mandate behind it. Whether the CHOGM hosting translates into durable diplomatic positioning — particularly on the Citizenship by Investment file that the US has flagged as a concern — will be tested through the second half of the year.
Source: ABS TV Radio Antigua; Antigua News, May 12, 2026.