The need for a global meningitis genome library (GMGL) was identified at a high-level meeting of international experts hosted by Wilton Park (a branch of the UK Foreign Office), and led by Meningitis Research Foundation (MRF) in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), in May 2017. This meeting first outlined a global vision to defeat meningitis and called for an action plan to get there by 2030, in line with the timeframe of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The development of a GMGL is a key supportive pillar for the WHO Defeating Meningitis by 2030 Global Roadmap. The initiative includes the most prominent bacterial meningitis causing pathogens.