On 22 September 2026, ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations member states and the United Kingdom published a joint ministerial declaration on future economic cooperation, marking five years of their Dialogue Partnership. The declaration, issued by the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade and Lord Sarwar, sets out a focused agenda for deeper economic ties.

In the text, the ministers said the ASEAN-UK trade relationship reached over £62.0 billion in 2025. They also reaffirmed a shared commitment to a rules-based multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization at its core, alongside ASEAN Centrality and implementation of the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific. The declaration recalled the 2021 Joint Ministerial Declaration and the ASEAN-UK Plan of Action (2022-2026) as foundations for the partnership.

The document outlines planned cooperation across several areas: economic resilience, including supply chain resilience; financial services and cross-border payment connectivity; regulatory reform and international standards, partly through the ASEAN-UK Economic Integration Programme; the digital economy, including support for ASEAN's Digital Economy Framework Agreement; clean energy, including the ASEAN Power Grid and exploration of emerging technologies such as civil nuclear energy; and skills, small business support and public-private partnership. The commitments are framed as intentions for future work rather than concluded agreements.