Our Stories Built the Movement: Long-Term Survivors of HIV Summit Takes Place This Week in Sitges

This week, from 25–28 March 2026, the European AIDS Treatment Group (EATG), together with Ribbon – A Center of Excellence (USA), The Reunion Project (USA), and Realize (Canada), is bringing together a powerful global community in Sitges, Barcelona (Spain) for the Long-Term Survivors of HIV Summit.

This is more than a meeting. It is a moment of recognition, resistance, and renewal.

The Summit convenes long-term survivors and lifetime survivors from across Europe and North America, people whose lives, voices, and activism transformed the history of HIV.

For three days, participants will come together to share stories, build connections, and co-create a collective “Legacy Chest”, a living archive of experiences, reflections, and demands that will fuel future advocacy, education, and system change.

At its core, this gathering is about power: reclaiming narratives, challenging silence, and ensuring that those who lived through the epidemic continue to lead the response today and relay their learnings to the new generation.

Together, participants will confront the realities of ageing with HIV through the power of community and storytelling, reflecting on:

• Moments that defined survival: Participants will reflect on specific points in time that shaped their journey, capturing personal experiences that connect individual stories to the broader history of HIV.
• What we did to survive and resist: They will explore how they supported themselves and others, built communities when systems failed, and led collective action, advocacy, and care.
• Lessons learned through lived experience: Participants will consider what their journeys reveal about resilience, mental health, dignity, and navigating stigma and healthcare systems.
• What must be carried forward: They will share what future generations need to know, what should never be forgotten, what still needs to change, and what surviving HIV teaches about love, care, and justice. This Summit also stands as an act of remembrance, honouring those we lost, whose courage and activism made today possible.

And it is a call to action.

Because despite medical progress, stigma persists. Systems fall short. Voices are still unheard.

Following the Summit, EATG and its partners will transform the stories and insights gathered into concrete tools to drive change, improve health outcomes, and amplify the resilience and leadership of long-term survivors.

#HIVLTS2026

Background

Scientific advances have changed the course of HIV, but not the need for justice. Today, people diagnosed in the early years of the epidemic are ageing, carrying decades of lived experience shaped by loss, resilience, and resistance. Their knowledge is not just history, it is a roadmap for the future. Yet ageing with HIV brings new and complex challenges that remain under-recognised and under-addressed. Long-term and lifetime survivors are not just witnesses to history, they are experts. Through storytelling, they continue to challenge stigma, educate communities, and push systems to do better.

About the project: https://www.eatg.org/projects/long-term-survivors-of-hiv/

About the event: https://www.eatg.org/events/long-term-survivors-of-hiv-summit-honouring-the-past-shaping-the-future/

The Long-Term Survivors of HIV project is led by EATG and partners, with support from Gilead Sciences, ViiV Healthcare, and Merck, Sharp & Dohme.