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Biennial summit of the leaders of Commonwealth of Nations member states

conferences held before 1971

The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM; '/tʃ//ɒ//g//əm/ or'/tʃ//əʊ//m/) is a biennial summit meeting of the governmental leaders from all Commonwealth nations. Despite the name, the head of state may be present in the meeting instead of the head of government, especially among semi presidential states. Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2013, for example, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, instead of Sri Lankan Prime Minister D. M. Jayaratne, was the meeting chairman. Every two years the meeting is held in a different member state and is chaired by that nation's respective prime minister or president, who becomes the Commonwealth Chair in Office until the next meeting. Queen Elizabeth II, who was the Head of the Commonwealth, attended every CHOGM beginning with Ottawa in 1973 until Perth in 2011, although her formal participation only began in 1997. She was represented by the Prince of Wales at the 2013 meeting as the 87 year old monarch was curtailing long distance travel. and the 2018 summit (delayed by one year) in London, but was represented again by the Prince of Wales at the 2022 meeting (delayed by two years) in Rwanda. The first CHOGM was held in 1971 in Singapore and there have been 26 held in total: the most recent was held in Kigali, Rwanda.

The meetings originated with the leaders of the self governing colonies of the British Empire. The First Colonial Conference in 1887 was followed by periodic meetings, known as Imperial Conferences from 1907, of government leaders of the Empire. The development of the independence of the dominions, and the creation of a number of new dominions, as well as the invitation of Southern Rhodesia (which also attended as a sui generis colony), changed the nature of the meetings. This decentralisation of power demanded a reformulation of the meetings. Instead of the meetings always being held in London, they would rotate across the membership, subject to countries' ability to host the meetings: beginning with Singapore in 1971. They were also renamed the 'Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings' to reflect the growing diversity of the constitutional structures in the Commonwealth.

The core of the CHOGM are the executive sessions, which are the formal gatherings of the heads of government to do business. However, the majority of the important decisions are held not in the main meetings themselves, but at the informal 'retreats': introduced at the second CHOGM, in Ottawa, by Prime Minister of Canada Pierre Trudeau, The 1971 CHOGM lasted for nine days, and the 1977 and 1991 CHOGMs for seven days each. However, Harare's epochal CHOGM was the last to last a week; the 1993 CHOGM lasted for five days, and the contentious 1995 CHOGM for only three and a half. According to his daughter, Denis Thatcher also referred to CHOGM as standing for 'Coons Holidaying on Government Money'. In 2011, British Prime Minister David Cameron informed the British House of Commons that his proposals to reform the rules governing royal succession, a change which would require the approval of all sixteen Commonwealth realms, was approved at the 28–30 October CHOGM in Perth, subsequently referred to as the Perth Agreement. Rwanda joined the Commonwealth in 2009 despite the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative's (CHRI) finding that "the state of governance and human rights in Rwanda does not satisfy Commonwealth standards", and that it "does not therefore qualify for admission". Both the CHRI and Human Rights Watch have found that respect for democracy and human rights in Rwanda has declined since the country joined the Commonwealth. There have been calls for the Commonwealth to stand up for democracy and human rights in Rwanda at the 2022 CHOGM.

Under the Millbrook Commonwealth Action Programme, each CHOGM is responsible for renewing the remit of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, whose responsibility it is to uphold the Harare Declaration on the core political principles of the Commonwealth.