The 2006 Riga summit was a NATO summit held in the Olympic Sports Centre, Riga, Latvia from 28 to 29 November 2006. The most important topics discussed were the War in Afghanistan and the future role and borders of the alliance. Further, the summit focused on the alliance's continued transformation, taking stock of what has been accomplished since the 2002 Prague Summit. NATO also committed itself to extending further membership invitations in the upcoming 2008 Bucharest Summit. This summit was the first NATO summit held on the territory of the Baltic states.

The summit was held in the Olympic Sports Centre, Riga. Roads in the center of Riga were closed down and parking was not allowed at the airport or at several roads, out of fear of car bombs. About 9000 Latvian police officers and soldiers took care of the Summit's security, while more than 450 other airmen from seven European NATO countries were called upon to ensure a no-fly zone above the summit in an operation called Operation Peaceful Summit. This enhanced ongoing Baltic Air Policing activities with additional aircraft, communications and maintenance support.

All agreements were not actually made in the North Atlantic Council meeting, but in fact, it was made in the Istanbul Summit, 2003, except for the signing of the missile defense contract which happened on 28 November. The Council meeting was held on 29 November.

While the tensions between NATO members from the build-up to the invasion of Iraq had dissipated, the NATO summit, and the months preceding the summit, were marked by divisions between the United States and the United Kingdom on the one side and France, Germany, Italy and Spain on the other. Two rifts existed, one about the military contributions to the war in Afghanistan, and the other concerning whether or not NATO should assume a more global role.

Before and during the summit US president George W. Bush, British prime minister Tony Blair, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende made a plea to European NATO members to make more troops available for deployment in Afghanistan, remove the national caveats (i.e. national restrictions on how, when and where forces can be used) and start sending its troops into the conflict-ridden south of the country. According to Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) General James L. Jones it was not the lack of combat troops and the caveats were the problem, but the lack of adequate helicopters and military intelligence to support airlift and on-the-ground operations.

While the NATO countries in question refused to participate in the fighting in the south, they agreed to remove some of these national caveats, and in an emergency situation, all national caveats should cease to exist, meaning that every ally should come to the aid of the forces that require assistance. A number of NATO member states also pledged to provide additional assets, including fighters, helicopters, infantry companies as well as training teams that will mentor the Afghan National Army. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said that the removal of some of the caveats meant that some 20,000 of the 32,000 NATO troops in ISAF are made "more usable" for combat duties and that 90% of the formal mission requirements were now filled. Military sources, however, told reporters at the summit that these caveats never existed in emergency situations, adding that it would be a strange alliance where one country's soldiers refused to support their allies in an emergency. NATO leaders also backed a French proposal to set up a "contact group" to coordinate action concerning Afghanistan, but the United States had reservations about France's proposal to include Iran, which has considerable influence over the west of Afghanistan, in the proposed contact group due to the dispute over Iran's nuclear programme. The group was modelled on the one set up for the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s.

Political scientist Joseph Nye commented that "while the Riga summit relaxed some of these caveats to allow assistance to allies in dire circumstances, Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, and the US are doing most of the fighting in southern Afghanistan, while French, German, and Italian troops are deployed in the quieter north. It is difficult to see how NATO can succeed in stabilizing Afghanistan unless it is willing to commit more troops and give commanders more flexibility." The controversy surrounding the differences in contributions to Afghanistan indeed remained after the summit. For instance, in March 2007, British commanders accused the NATO members that refused to fight in the conflict-ridden south (in non-emergency situations) of causing "huge resentment" and a sense of betrayal and undermined the credibility of the alliance. They added that despite the earlier pleas for reinforcements or to have "operational caveats" removed, some countries, notably France and Germany, were still not heeding their requests.

Besides the above discussion about contributions and caveats, the summit was noticed to paint an optimistic picture of the war in Afghanistan and Afghanistan's future. For instance, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said that "real progress" had been made in Afghanistan and that this was the main highlight of the summit. He strongly disagreed with visions of "doom and gloom," and added that five years after the defeat of the Taliban regime, Afghanistan had become a democratic society that is "no longer a threat to the world." He also believed that the defeat of the insurgency was only a matter of time, stating that the war in Afghanistan "is winnable, it is being won, but it is not yet won because, of course, we have many challenges in Afghanistan." In his opinion, these challenges included besides military engagement mainly reconstruction and development work.