Five things to look forward to at the 2026 UK Walking Summit

An animation of a parent holding the hand of their child, who is holding a green balloon

Liverpool is the host for Living Streets’ flagship event, with the Summit celebrating its 10th anniversary’ on 25 March.

As you’d expect, there's a lot to look forward to – and our Campaigns & Public Affairs Coordinator Zak Viney has picked out his highlights from the programme.

Zak Viney speaking into a microphone at the 2025 UK Walking Summit

1. Celebrating campaign successes

Delivering a fully pedestrianised Oxford Street, influencing a new UK Strategy for Road Safety, securing political action to end pavement parking in England – Living Streets has had a memorable year, securing wins for walking and wheeling across the nations. At the Summit, we’ll gather amongst political leaders, leading academics and grassroots campaigners to celebrate these successes and work out what’s next.

Establishing this context will be Local Transport Minister, Lilian Greenwood MP, who’ll outline the UK Government’s plans to create safer streets for everyone.
We’ll also be showcasing work in the region, which is putting walkers at the heart of change, with Brookside and local legend Simon O’Brien providing a keynote address as Active Travel Commissioner for the Liverpool City Region.

A shot from inside Bristol City Hall from the 2025 UK Walking Summit

2. Technology’s role in pedestrians’ future

When delivering Living Streets’ campaigns, I’m always speaking to our members and supporters about the role of emerging modes of transport that are providing new ways for people to get around our towns and cities.

Autonomous vehicles, shared e-bikes and e-scooters provide exciting opportunities and important challenges for urban mobility. The theme of this year’s Summit is ‘The future of streets: putting pedestrians first’, where we’ll discuss how to ensure that people walking benefit from these emerging technologies.

No better a person to speak to this than Living Streets Trustee and former West Midlands Active Travel Commissioner Adam Tranter, who’ll chair our headline panel bringing stakeholders together on this important issue. Joining Adam will be representatives from Living Streets, Waymo UK & Western Europe, Voi Technology UK and Mott MacDonald – who will look into the crystal ball and share their predictions for the future and tell us what we can do now to ensure pedestrians are prioritised.

3. Co-design in communities: A deep dive

The most popular and effective street interventions come from where state and citizens work together to shape projects with local interests at their heart.

At the Summit, we’re excited to show off two local Liverpool projects with collaborative planning at its core.

In the morning, Living Streets Vice Chair, Christopher Martin and Katie Shannon from the Freshfield Foundation will shine a light on a project engaging communities to shape the future of their local streets, in ‘Creating streets for all in Bootle’.

And in the afternoon, Cllr Jane Corbett & Adam Bryne of West Everton Community Centre will share a ‘walkshop’ through the new ‘green streets’ of West Everton –where the urban planning of the 1960s -1990s severed the area with major roads, prioritising cars over the community.

Jane and Adam will discuss the negative impact of when powerful stakeholders who don’t listen or respect the local community, whilst demonstrating the positive changes that have been made through collaborative between state and citizens. There’ll be great views across Liverpool and over to the Welsh mountains too!

4. Building a vision for tomorrow

Arguably, when you’ve been to one conference, you’ve been to them all.

For our tenth anniversary UK Walking Summit, we wanted to do something different – and create a legacy of the Summit that could make strides forward for walking and wheeling in the years to come.

We’ll build inspiration from expert keynotes in the morning, from Alexei Lee and Jo Bacon from our headline partner AtkinsRealis, as well as Dr Agustina Martire, Reader in the field of everyday streets at Queen’s University Belfast. We’ll then enter the afternoon with the tools and knowhow to enter a programme of speed discussions, sharing our knowledge and lived experiences to shape a new visionary document, Living Streets’ ‘Blueprint for the Future of Streets’.

These sessions will take the form of a facilitated conversation, not dissimilar to ones you might see at a citizens’ assembly. Each discussion will be facilitated by people with various lived experiences (including women, girls & minority genders; people of colour and disabled people). These conversations will look to understand where people have experiences that overlap and intersect – shaping insights that will inform the Blueprint.

But what’s the point? Living Streets will use this work, combined with meta-analysis of work across our sector to shape a vision for the streets of the future. We’ll create an influencing tool to urge politicians to think boldly, broadly and hopefully – delivering streets for the future that are greener, healthier and above all, keep pedestrians safe.

5) There are places I remember…

Our ever popular ‘walkshops’ will allow Summit delegates to explore the wonderful city of Liverpool, one of my favourites in the UK.

Just over two hours from London and only one from Manchester, Liverpool is home of the Beatles, Mo Salah, Tate Liverpool, a bombed-out church and The Cavern Club. It carries an energising buzz across its lively city-centre - as well a journey across the city’s past, present and future on its world-famous waterfront.

Our choice of eight walkshops will give the opportunity to explore the city and its history, as well as demonstrating groundbreaking projects and notable challenges shaping the pedestrian environment.

On Walkshop 1, Liverpool ONE’s heritage walk will take us on a journey through 300-years of the city’s industrial history, including the story of the creation of the world’s first commercial wet dock.

You can also see where Liverpool is making strides to redistribute space to prioritise pedestrians, with two walkshops showcasing the work on Castle Street (Walkshop 3) and St George’s Gateway (Walkshop 5) – led by Liverpool City Council and Active Travel England, respectively.

But there’s always work still to be done, including taking on the effect wider, taller and heavier vehicles have on our towns and cities - with Clean Cities Campaign (Walkshop 4) taking participants onto the streets to observe the growth of SUVs and look at the impact this has on those walking and wheeling.