US pressure prompts EU, Canada and Lithuania to withdraw support from Vilnius disinformation conference

The Trump administration has pressured several governments to withdraw sponsorship from a major European conference on disinformation in Vilnius, according to people familiar with the matter. The event, #Disinfo2026, is taking place on Wednesday and Thursday and is described as the annual meeting of Europe's counter-disinformation community. It is being organised by the Brussels-based non-profit EU Disinfo Lab.

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Support from the Lithuanian ministry of foreign affairs, the European External Action Service and Global Affairs Canada was removed in the days before the conference, with their logos disappearing from the event website. Photos shared from the venue also show white stickers placed over the logos of those organisations on printed conference materials. Three people familiar with the matter, including European officials, said the US state department had contacted multiple governments about their support for the conference.

Internal state department documents seen by the Guardian show US officials thanking Lithuania for "taking US concerns seriously". The document said Washington was grateful that Lithuania had found a panel framing the US as a foreign information threat "reprehensible and surprising" and had welcomed its decision to limit involvement in the conference. The panel, titled "USA as a FIMI threat: adapt, acknowledge, push back", took place on Wednesday and examined how Europe's disinformation community could build resilience without Washington.

The episode matters because it touches on a sensitive area of transatlantic cooperation: how governments define and respond to foreign information manipulation and interference. The conference brings together researchers, journalists, technologists and policymakers working on media resilience and disinformation, making sponsorship and official backing politically significant. The pressure campaign also raises questions about how far governments can go in shaping the agenda of a forum that is meant to examine disinformation threats.

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The panel at the centre of the dispute appears to be the first time the conference has openly considered the idea that the United States itself could be treated as a disinformation actor in Europe. Sources and the internal document indicate the state department was especially focused on that session, which included three American speakers, among them a former CIA officer. The removal of logos and the covering of printed materials suggest the changes were made quickly and close to the start of the event.

It remains unclear how many governments were approached by US officials, what specific objections were raised beyond the panel, and whether any further changes will be made to the programme. It is also not clear whether the withdrawals will affect attendance or the conference's wider agenda. What is clear is that the dispute has already altered the public face of the event and drawn attention to tensions over who gets to define disinformation risks in Europe.