Hong Kong's Department of Justice staged Mediation Week 2026 in early May under the theme 'Mediate First: An Attempt of Mediation, Harvests Abundant Harmony', with Secretary for Justice Paul Lam Ting-kwok opening five days of programming aimed well beyond the legal profession.
The week's agenda illustrated how broadly the city now applies the mediation idea: sessions covered peer mediation in schools — with the Mediation Essay Competition expanded to students across the Greater Bay Area — alongside sports mediation, elder mediation, and the perennially contentious building water-leakage disputes that clog Hong Kong's tribunals.
The timing was deliberate. Mediation Week rolled directly into the inaugural Global Mediation Summit of IOMed on May 8, allowing the government to present a single narrative: a city where mediation is practised from the classroom to the intergovernmental level.
That narrative is now official policy. With IOMed headquartered in Wan Chai and an updated Hong Kong Mediation Code approved in April, the government's stated goal of making Hong Kong the 'global capital of mediation' has moved from slogan toward institutional reality.
