Since its launch at COP27 in 2022, the Global Shield has charted a new course for climate risk finance: from fragmented, reactive responses to a systematic, country-led framework for pre-arranged financial protection. Rooted in the principles first laid out in the Global Shield Ambition, the initiative builds on the legacy of the InsuResilience Global Partnership and scales it into an integrated architecture that can deliver sustainable protection to climate-vulnerable populations worldwide. The Global Shield envisions a world where systematic, coherent, and sustained financial protection enables communities to anticipate, respond to, and recover from climate shocks. To realise this vision, at its core, Global Shield’s mission is to increase protection for climate-vulnerable people and their livelihoods by facilitating “substantially more and better pre-arranged finance against disasters. Since the official launch in 2022, Global Shield has extended support to 12 countries and one region across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific. 2025 has been a year of action – where ambition turned into official requests, and requests into tangible, country-anchored commitments and the start of multiple implementation journeys. The 2025 Global Shield Annual Report presents an overview of the progress made in the implementation of the initiative. The year also marks the end of the co-hosting arrangement of the Global Shield Secretariat with the current co-hosts, GIZ and United Nations University. From 1 January 2026, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management will assume the hosting of the Global Shield Secretariat, bringing financial innovation, research and solutions closer to beneficiary countries.