The United States will host the fourth Nuclear Security Summit in 2016. As President Obama remarked at the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit, preparations are currently underway.

“I’m looking forward to hosting all of you in the United States, in 2016. We had a good discussion this afternoon about how we should conceive of this summit two years from now. The consensus, based on what I heard, was that we should recognize this next summit will be a transition summit in which heads of state and government are still participating, but that we are shifting towards a more sustainable model that utilizes our ministers, our technical people, and we are building some sort of architecture that can effectively focus and implement on these issues and supplement the good work that is being done by the IAEA and others.

So I see two tasks before us over the next two years. Number one is we have to set very clearly what are the actionable items that we’ve already identified that we know can get done if we have the political will to do them, and let’s go ahead and get them done so that in 2016 we can report out that we have made extraordinary progress and achieved many of the benchmarks and targets that we had set at the very first Nuclear Security Summit. In other words, I think it is important for us not to relax, but rather accelerate our efforts over the next two years, sustain momentum so that we finish strong in 2016. And my team will be contacting all of you to find out specific ways in which you think we can move the ball forward over the next two years.

The second thing we’ll be doing is soliciting ideas from each of you about the ultimate architecture that should be constructed to ensure that beyond 2016 we are able to keep this process alive and effective, and that we are able to sync up the efforts of the Nuclear Security Summit with existing institutions like the IAEA, Interpol, the United Nations, some of the treaties that are already in force.

All of you have important views on that, and we’re going to want to make sure that you provide them so that by the time we get to 2016 we have a well thought-out process that can be ratified at that meeting.”

- Remarks by President Obama at Closing Session of the Nuclear Security Summit, The Hague, The Netherlands, March 25, 2014