The conference, #Disinfo2026, is an annual gathering of researchers, journalists, technologists and policymakers organised by EU Disinfo Lab, an independent Brussels non-profit. According to The Guardian, which says it understands the sequence of events, logos of the withdrawing sponsors were removed from the conference website in the days before the event. The meeting went ahead on 7 and 8 October in Vilnius.
The EU's diplomatic service withdrew alongside Canada and Lithuania — all three having been pressured by Trump administration officials. The Guardian's account does not specify which officials made the request, through which channel, or what arguments were put. Those details remain unconfirmed.
What is documented is the mechanism: formal or informal diplomatic pressure applied to state-level and EU-level sponsors of an event run by a non-governmental body. The withdrawal did not cancel the conference, but it stripped public institutional backing from a gathering whose explicit subject is the integrity of public information.
Whether any sponsor communicated conditions, received assurances or protested before complying is not established by the available reporting. That gap is also the most consequential question: acquiescence under pressure and acquiescence under agreement are two different acts, and the sources do not yet distinguish between them.
Gabriel Fenech 
Isla Camilleri 
Alexandre Noir