One of the biggest challenges for conservation in the 21st century is establishing and maintaining sufficient capacity to tackle the growing number of environmental pressures around the world. This capacity needs to provide individuals, communities and organizations with the skills, knowledge and information for undertaking the wide range of tasks required for conserving biodiversity. To build this capacity we need to develop, disseminate and evaluate a diversity of relevant and cost-effective methods. This can only be achieved by ensuring we learn from initiatives in different regions and have the opportunities to communicate with others building capacity for conservation. Three regional conferences—in Colombia in 2013, Kenya in 2015 and India in 2017—have facilitated the exchange of ideas on this subject. From these meetings a number of cross-cutting issues emerged: (1) A range of new and regionally relevant capacity building tools is required to scale-up efforts to build capacity for conservation, including the further development of technological solutions such as e-learning and tools that are accessible in a range of languages. (2) Capacity building strategies and initiatives must take into account the often different enabling environments in different regions. (3) There is a need for the development of methods to evaluate capacity building and identify best practice. (4) There is an urgent need for conversations between donors and grantees to gauge expectations and guide the appropriate focus of funding streams. To directly tackle these issues, a global conference will take place at the Zoological Society of London on 30 July–1 August 2019. See https://conservationcapacity2019.co.uk/ for further information and the preliminary programme. The presentations will be live-streamed and made available on the conference website, and a series of short practical guides providing a comprehensive review of all major capacity building methods and associated research evidence will be published. For further information or to discuss attendance please contact Mark O'Connell (moconnell@glos.ac.uk).