The Munich Security Conference announced on 8 October 2024 that Jens Stoltenberg would become the next chairman after the 61st edition in February 2025, succeeding “current Chairman Ambassador Christoph Heusgen.” Wolfgang Ischinger, president of the MSC Foundation Council, thanked Heusgen for “the many contributions” in “his three years at the helm.”
Heusgen’s quoted statement on that page: he was “immensely grateful to the MSC team for everything that we have achieved over the past three years, including the organization of three outstanding Munich Conferences, the opening of the MSC to the ‘Global South’, for reaching gender parity in our panels, and for increasing the participation of the next generation.” He singled out a “Women Parliamentarians Program” and “Zeitenwende on tour.”
In the February 2025 IP Quarterly interview he said that during three years as chairman he “invited all the major UN players,” that “peace through dialogue” rested on “the rule of law, the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” and that he believed in gender balance: “Last year for the first time in the MSC’s history more than 50 percent of those on the podiums were women.” Those are his claims about his tenure. They are not a crime and not a U.S. office.
A later MSC leadership update (13 October 2025) said Stoltenberg would assume the chair after public duties in Norway ended, with Ischinger continuing in the interim. That is succession paperwork after Heusgen’s close. It does not rewrite the 2022–February 2025 chairmanship.