The 2025–2026 Transnational Organised Crime programme broadly explores the structure and organisation or organised criminal groups. This involves the background, evolution, and history of selected groups, their leaders and other members, their hierarchies, networks, and associations, and the many myths that surround organised criminal group. Specific projects explore concepts and definitions in international and national laws, different types and models of organised criminal groups, offences penalising participation in and other support of organised criminal groups, notorious leaders of organised criminal groups, the use of informants and undercover agents to investigate organised criminal groups, and major cases in which (alleged) organised criminal groups were put on trial. 

For the purposes of this programme, organised criminal groups are understood as defined by article 3(a) of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime to mean a structured group of three or more persons, existing for a period of time and acting in concert with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offences established in accordance with this Convention, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit. 

Not further covered here are the operations of organised criminal groups, specifically the crime types they engage in and law enforcement measures to prevent and suppress organised crime.