What is the format of the competition?

The competition involves participants engaging in a simulated arbitration proceeding, which includes both written submissions and oral arguments, in a college-level format.

2025-2026 Twenty-Third Annual Willem C. Vis East International Commercial Arbitration Moot

Mar 15–22, 2026Hong Kong, Hong KongIn-person

ConcludedRegistration closed

The Willem C. Vis East International Commercial Arbitration Moot is an annual competition focused on international commercial law and arbitration. Held in Hong Kong, the event draws participants from around the world to engage in a simulated arbitration proceeding. It provides a practical learning experience in the application of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) and international commercial arbitration rules.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 4 countries stand on the dominant committee topic. Click through for the full country profile.

China

A key participant and host region, emphasizing the importance of international commercial law and arbitration in its economic development.

Role in topic

As the host city for the Vis East Moot, Hong Kong (part of CHN) serves as a significant hub for international trade and dispute resolution. Its legal framework and position as a gateway to mainland CHN make it a crucial location for discussions on international commercial arbitration and the application of the CISG.

United States

A leading nation in international trade and legal education, with strong engagement in commercial arbitration.

Role in topic

The USA is a signatory to the CISG and a major player in international commerce. Its legal institutions and universities frequently participate in the Vis Moot, reflecting the country's commitment to developing expertise in international commercial law and promoting arbitration as a dispute resolution mechanism.

Germany

A prominent European economy with a strong tradition in international contract law and arbitration.

Role in topic

DEU has a long-standing engagement with international commercial law, including the CISG, and is home to numerous arbitration institutions. German universities are consistently strong participants in the Vis Moot, contributing to the global discourse on international trade law.

Austria

The host of the sister Vis Moot competition, demonstrating a commitment to international commercial arbitration.

Role in topic

While the Vis East Moot is in Hong Kong, AUT hosts the original Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot. This connection highlights AUT's significant role in fostering education and practice in international commercial arbitration, making it a key country in the broader Vis Moot ecosystem.

Topics & background

The history behind each committee topic and the states that shape it.

International Commercial Law

International commercial law governs cross-border transactions between private parties, drawing on a patchwork of national statutes, treaties, trade usages, and model instruments. Its modern foundations were laid in the mid-20th century, when the explosion of global trade after the Bretton Woods era exposed the friction caused by divergent domestic contract regimes. Institutions such as UNCITRAL (established 1966), UNIDROIT, the ICC, and the Hague Conference on Private International Law emerged to harmonize rules on sales, payments, transport, and dispute resolution. The core dispute in the field today concerns the balance between uniformity and party autonomy. Harmonization instruments like the CISG, the UNIDROIT Principles, and the Hague Principles on Choice of Law promote predictability, but states retain divergent mandatory rules on consumer protection, sanctions compliance, competition, and ESG-related due diligence. Recent developments — including the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, expanding US and UK secondary sanctions, and digital trade frameworks under the WTO Joint Statement Initiative — have layered new public-law obligations onto private commercial relationships. The Vis East Moot situates participants within this evolving regime, where commercial actors must navigate overlapping sources of law while arbitrators and courts increasingly grapple with transnational public-policy concerns alongside classical contract questions.

Key players

International Arbitration

International arbitration evolved as the default mechanism for resolving cross-border commercial disputes because neither party typically trusts the other's national courts. Its modern architecture rests on three pillars: the 1958 New York Convention on enforcement of awards, the 1985 UNCITRAL Model Law on arbitral procedure, and the institutional rules of bodies such as the ICC, LCIA, SIAC, HKIAC, and CIETAC. Together these instruments created a largely self-contained system in which parties choose the seat, the law, the arbitrators, and the rules, with limited judicial intervention. The central contemporary debates concern legitimacy, transparency, and the system's expanding scope. Investor-state arbitration has faced backlash over perceived encroachment on regulatory sovereignty, prompting UNCITRAL Working Group III's ISDS reform process and the 2014 Mauritius Convention on Transparency. In commercial arbitration, recurring issues include third-party funding disclosure, arbitrator conflicts and diversity, the use of expedited and emergency procedures, and the rise of cybersecurity and AI in proceedings. Sanctions regimes — particularly those targeting Russian parties since 2022 — have also tested institutions' ability to administer cases neutrally. Regional competition among arbitral seats has intensified, with Singapore and Hong Kong challenging the historical dominance of London, Paris, and Geneva, while Dubai, Shenzhen, and Sao Paulo build out new hubs. The result is a maturing but contested field in which procedural innovation runs alongside renewed scrutiny of arbitration's public-interest dimensions.

Key players

International Trade Law

International trade law regulates the cross-border movement of goods, services, and increasingly data and investment. The post-1945 multilateral system was built around the GATT and, since 1995, the World Trade Organization, supplemented by a dense web of regional and bilateral agreements such as the USMCA, CPTPP, RCEP, and the African Continental Free Trade Area. Customs, sanitary and phytosanitary rules, technical barriers, and trade remedies sit alongside private-law instruments like Incoterms and the CISG that govern individual transactions. The system is under significant strain. The WTO Appellate Body has been effectively paralyzed since 2019 due to the United States' blockage of appointments, leaving disputes unresolved or routed through the interim MPIA. Industrial policy has returned forcefully through the US Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act, the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and Critical Raw Materials Act, and China's export controls on gallium, germanium, and rare earths. US-China tariff escalation, Russia sanctions, and a proliferation of national security exceptions have blurred the line between trade and geopolitics. For commercial actors, this fragmentation increases compliance risk and shapes contract drafting around force majeure, hardship, sanctions, and export-control clauses — issues frequently litigated in arbitration. The question facing the trading system is whether plurilateral initiatives on e-commerce, services, and investment facilitation can preserve a rules-based core amid geoeconomic competition.

Key players

United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG)

Adopted in Vienna in 1980 and entering into force in 1988, the CISG is the most successful uniform private-law instrument ever drafted, now in force in over 95 states representing the bulk of world trade. It grew out of UNCITRAL's effort to replace the unsuccessful 1964 Hague ULIS and ULF conventions, providing a single regime governing formation of contracts, obligations of buyer and seller, remedies, risk of loss, and damages for international sales of goods between parties in different contracting states. The CISG's core design choice — a self-contained, autonomously interpreted regime that parties can opt out of under Article 6 — remains contested. Common-law practitioners, particularly in England (a notable non-signatory) and parts of the United States, often exclude the Convention in favor of familiar domestic law, while civil-law jurisdictions and most major Asian economies apply it routinely. Recurring interpretive disputes concern the scope of Article 7's uniformity mandate, the meaning of "fundamental breach," the treatment of standard terms and battle-of-the-forms, and the interface with domestic validity rules and consumer protection. Contemporary issues include the CISG's application to software, digital goods, and hybrid supply contracts; its interaction with sanctions, force majeure, and hardship under Article 79; and CISG Advisory Council opinions that increasingly shape arbitral and judicial reasoning. The Convention is therefore both a foundational text for the Vis Moot and a living instrument adapting to digital commerce and supply-chain shocks.

Key players

UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration

Adopted by UNCITRAL in 1985 and substantially amended in 2006, the Model Law provides a template for national arbitration statutes designed to harmonize procedural law across jurisdictions. It addresses the arbitration agreement, composition and jurisdiction of the tribunal, conduct of proceedings, interim measures, recognition and enforcement of awards, and grounds for setting aside — closely tracking the structure of the New York Convention. More than 85 states and over 120 jurisdictions in total have enacted legislation based on the Model Law, including Australia, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, Singapore, and many others. The 2006 amendments modernized two key areas: the form requirement for arbitration agreements (Article 7, with two alternative options), and a comprehensive regime for interim measures and preliminary orders (Chapter IV A), reflecting practice that had outgrown the original text. Ongoing debates concern whether to further revise the Model Law to address emergency arbitrators, third-party funding, expedited procedures, technology-driven proceedings, and the relationship with investor-state arbitration reforms under Working Group III. Notably, several leading seats — including England, France, Switzerland, and Sweden — are not Model Law jurisdictions but have arbitration statutes that converge on similar principles. The Model Law's influence is therefore both direct, through adoption, and indirect, as a global reference standard for arbitral procedure.

Key players

New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards

Concluded in 1958 under UN auspices and now with 172 contracting states, the New York Convention is the single most important treaty in international arbitration. It obliges courts of contracting states to recognize written arbitration agreements and to enforce foreign arbitral awards, subject only to a narrow, exhaustive list of grounds for refusal in Article V — such as invalidity of the agreement, due-process violations, excess of mandate, irregular tribunal composition, non-arbitrability, or conflict with the enforcing state's public policy. This regime largely replaced the less effective 1923 Geneva Protocol and 1927 Geneva Convention. The Convention's enduring success rests on its brevity and the broadly pro-enforcement disposition of national courts. Yet its application generates persistent controversy. Courts diverge on the autonomy of the arbitration agreement, the law governing its validity, the enforceability of awards set aside at the seat (compare the French Hilmarton/Putrabali line with US Chromalloy/TermoRio jurisprudence), the scope of public-policy review, and the treatment of sovereign immunity from execution. The 2016 UNCITRAL Secretariat Guide and ongoing judicial dialogue aim to promote uniform interpretation. New pressures come from sanctions enforcement, anti-suit injunctions issued by Russian courts under the 2020 Lugovoi Law, and politically charged investor-state awards. Despite these tensions, the Convention remains the backbone that allows commercial arbitration — and instruments like the CISG and Model Law — to function as a truly global system.

Key players

Key terms & resources

The concepts worth knowing before 2025-2026 Twenty-Third Annual Willem C. Vis East International Commercial Arbitration Moot, plus lessons and profiles to go deeper.

Arbitration Clause Basel Convention Charter of the United Nations Club Goods Commercial Commercial Diplomacy

Country profiles

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

In the news

Recent reporting to ground your prep

India, South Korea Forge Five-Year Plan

Story

Frank Garcia Takes Over Africa Desk

Story

China's Atemoya Pledge Exposes Taiwan's Trap

Story

Goyal Shields Farmers From Trade Deal Risks

Story

Frequently asked questions

Related conferences

2025-2026 Twenty-Third Annual Willem C. Vis East International Commercial Arbitration Moot

Mar 15–22, 2026Hong Kong, Hong KongIn-person

ConcludedRegistration closed

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 4 countries stand on the dominant committee topic. Click through for the full country profile.

China

A key participant and host region, emphasizing the importance of international commercial law and arbitration in its economic development.

Role in topic

United States

A leading nation in international trade and legal education, with strong engagement in commercial arbitration.

Role in topic

Germany

A prominent European economy with a strong tradition in international contract law and arbitration.

Role in topic

Austria

The host of the sister Vis Moot competition, demonstrating a commitment to international commercial arbitration.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The history behind each committee topic and the states that shape it.

International Commercial Law

Key players

International Arbitration

Key players

International Trade Law

Key players

United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG)

Key players

UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration

Key players

New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards

Key players

Key terms & resources

The concepts worth knowing before 2025-2026 Twenty-Third Annual Willem C. Vis East International Commercial Arbitration Moot, plus lessons and profiles to go deeper.

Arbitration Clause Basel Convention Charter of the United Nations Club Goods Commercial Commercial Diplomacy

Country profiles

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier