The most interesting conversations I had at ISTR 2026 kept circling back to a single question: what can civil society do to resist democratic regression and anti-rights advances? This particularly resonated with me: resistance is the organising theme of this year’s CIVICUS State of Civil Society Report, and we are currently mapping the forms civil society resistance is taking worldwide. Aquino Alves spoke from Brazil, where civil society and public institutions are still working through the slow recovery from Bolsonaro’s far-right assault on democratic norms. Srinath spoke to the Indian experience, where a vast and inventive civil society keeps finding room to operate under mounting legal and financial pressure. Resistance tactics are borrowed and adapted across movements and borders.