This Special Section explores the role and functioning of verification for nuclear nonproliferation, arms control, and disarmament in an increasingly unstable world. How can verification regimes be adapted or enhanced to serve global security? This section combines contributions from various disciplines like natural and technical sciences, political science, and sociology to discuss the challenges and opportunities for verification in this evolving environment.

The issue aims to cover contributions relevant to both practitioners and academics working in the field of nuclear verification. Possible key questions to be addressed include, but are not limited to:

• How do current international and domestic changes and crises impact verification regimes and institutions?
• Which technical and non-technical approaches could potentially make current and possible future verification regimes more effective, reliable, trustworthy, and credible?
• How can compliance assessments be made when uncertainties and knowledge gaps remain? 
• What are the possibilities and limitations of verification in building confidence in environments of mistrust?  
• How is verification influenced by worldviews, mindsets, normative expectations, and notions of justice and injustice?
• How do geostrategic elements, such as cost-benefit calculations, threat perceptions, enforcement mechanisms, and (im)balances of power impact verification regimes?  
• What lessons could be learned from the history of negotiating, designing, and implementing verification mechanisms as well as (non-) compliance assessments? 
• Why do some verification mechanisms succeed while others fail?
• Which relevant actors and which relevant levels of analysis are needed to better understand verification regimes?
• How much verification is enough for the world today?

The Special Section welcomes contributions on those and associated subtopics and questions from the nuclear field but also beyond it. In addition to research articles submitted to peer review, we also welcome contributions such as interviews or commentaries. Some contributions can be presented in the forthcoming Science – Peace – Security ’25 Conference to be held 10-12 September 2025 in Julich, Germany.