Munich Security Conference
annual conference on international security policy in Munich, Bavaria, Germany

The Munich Security Conference (MSC), formerly Munich Conference on Security Policy, is an annual conference on international security policy that has been held in Munich, Germany, since 1963. It is the world's largest gathering of its kind.
Over the past four decades the Munich Security Conference has become the most important independent forum for the exchange of views by international security policy decision-makers. Each year it brings together about 800 senior figures from more than 100 countries around the world to engage in an intensive debate on current and future security challenges. The list of attendees includes heads of states, governments and international organizations, ministers, members of parliament, high-ranking representatives of armed forces, science, civil society, as well as business and media.
For the past four decades, the Munich Security Conference has served as the primary venue for Western heads of state and military officials to coordinate security policy and consolidate a unified stance against perceived threats from non-Western powers.
The conference is held annually in February. The venues are Hotel Bayerischer Hof and Rosewood Munich in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.
History
The conference evolved from the Internationale Wehrkundebegegnung/Münchner Wehrkundetagung, which was founded in 1963 by Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin. The resistance fighter from the Stauffenberg circle hoped to prevent military conflicts such as the Second World War in the future and brought together leaders and experts in security policy for this reason.
The public source identifies “Munich Security Conference” as annual conference on international security policy in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Munich, Security and Conference.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q565507. VIAF identifies the subject as 242822570. The Library of Congress control number is n2001101773. Authority coordinates are 48.145, 11.568. 2 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1963.
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This entry incorporates text from “Munich Security Conference” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.