Three Days in Budapest: What the World Protocol Matters Conference Taught Me About the Future of Our Profession

There are events you attend, and there are events that recalibrate how you see your own field. The 5th Annual World Protocol Matters Conference, held from 11 to 13 May 2026 in Budapest, was firmly the second kind.

Organised by the Organisation of International Protocol Professionals (OIPP), the conference brought together participants and speakers from 47 countries: ambassadors, chiefs of protocol, diplomats, and practitioners who, between them, hold the institutional memory of how nations meet, negotiate, and build trust. To stand among them as a speaker, representing both Turkey and Moldova, was an honour I do not take lightly.

The Room

The tone was set from the first morning. The conference was opened by H.E. Pál Schmitt, former President of Hungary, former Ambassador, and former Chief of Protocol of the International Olympic Committee. Few people alive have seen protocol operate at so many levels of consequence, and his presence reminded everyone in the room why we were there: protocol is not decoration around power. It is part of how power is exercised responsibly.

What struck me most, though, were the conversations between sessions. This is where a conference earns its real value. The networking was exceptional: I had the chance to meet colleagues from all around the world, to exchange perspectives, and to discover how much common ground we share despite working in very different diplomatic environments. Those are the kinds of relationships that outlast any single event, and, as I argued in my own remarks, they are exactly what our profession needs more of.

The Central Question Of The Conference

If WPMC 2026 had a single through-line, it was the campaign for official United Nations recognition of 11 May as World Protocol Day. This is more than a symbolic gesture. It is an attempt to place protocol where it belongs – at the heart of international institutional life, and to assert, collectively, that the discipline deserves recognition equal to the role it quietly plays in keeping diplomacy functional. It is an initiative I support, personally and institutionally, and one I believe will define the next chapter of our field.

What I Argued In My Speech

I delivered a speech titled “Redesigning Protocol Service in a Multipolar World.” My central claim was simple but, I think, urgent: protocol has evolved far beyond ceremonial function. In a fragmented, multipolar world, it has become a strategic instrument of stability, soft power, and trust between nations. When protocol works perfectly, nothing happens: no incident, no misread gesture, no diplomatic fracture. That invisibility is not a weakness. It is the entire point.

From that premise, I offered six practical directions I believe protocol services must take today:

1. The Protocol Red Team – Every major diplomatic event should have an officer whose sole job is to anticipate how the other side will read each symbolic decision. Most protocol failures are not mistakes; they are misread signals. The counterpart perspective must be built in before the event, not diagnosed after it.
2. Protocol Literacy for Political Leaders – The weakest link in modern protocol is rarely the professional. It is the principal. Structured protocol briefings for incoming ministers and heads of state should be as standard as security briefings. They almost never are.
3. A Shared Symbolic Lexicon – The knowledge of symbolic sensitivities across diplomatic cultures already exists; it is simply not shared. The legal profession built a living resource for jurisdictional differences. Protocol has yet to do the same for symbolic ones.
4. The 48-Hour Rule – A protocol decision that once lived only in the room now lives permanently online. Services need a response doctrine for when footage of an encounter is publicly misread — and they need it within 48 hours, before the narrative hardens. In a world of permanent digital visibility, that absence is no longer acceptable.
5. A Dedicated Professional Network – Not a mailing list, and not an occasional conference. A structured peer network, with named counterparts across blocs, maintained between events and activated before crises rather than during them. This conference is already part of that network; the question is whether we are willing to formalise and deepen it.
6. Institutionalised Training Infrastructure – Medicine has continuing medical education. Law has continuing professional development. Diplomacy has its academies. Protocol does not yet have a recognised, accredited training infrastructure at scale. Building it, through shared curricula and eventually professional standards, is one of the most consequential investments our profession can make.

My Conclusion And An Invitation

I left Budapest more convinced than ever of the argument I went there to make: protocol is not only a practice. It is a discipline. And it is time we treated it as one.

The Institute of Etiquette and Protocol will continue to contribute to that effort, through education, through professional standards, and through the kind of cross-border relationships I was reminded of throughout these three days. I am also exploring, with genuine interest, the possibility of bringing a future edition of this conference closer to home.To the OIPP and the organisers: thank you for building a space where this conversation can happen at the highest level. And to my fellow practitioners reading this, I’ll leave you with the question I posed in Budapest: Which of these six directions would make the greatest difference in your own work,  and what would you add?