Non-governmental organisations and civil society groups have had a growing presence at the Biological Weapons Convention Review Conferences over the last few decades, with participation growing from six individuals in 1980 to more than 170 registered participants at the most recent Review Conference in 2022. This chapter draws on two workshops hosted by the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk in the aftermath of the Eighth and Ninth Review Conferences respectively. These workshops brought together academic and policy experts from disarmament and non-proliferation, the biosciences, and biosecurity to discuss the outcomes of the conferences and how these might shape the role of civil society efforts to support the aims of the Convention, especially in light of disappointing formal progress. In this chapter, we put forward several areas in which the workshops revealed unmet needs and suggest ways in which civil society might be able to contribute. These are grouped under the themes: Conflict, Consensus and Political Will; Resourcing and Representativeness; Scope and Extent of the Convention; and Knowledge Sharing, Expertise and Analysis. We end with reflections on how the focus of civil society work may change in response to possible future scenarios for the BWC.