This strand responds to the EES 2026 conference theme Systemic Learning. Building on the collaborative learning journey undertaken during 2025, including the EES Nonconference, it explores how systems-informed evaluation can strengthen learning and decision making in contexts marked by uncertainty, interdependence, and rapid change. The strand brings together practitioners, researchers, and policy actors to examine how systems approaches reshape evaluation mindsets, methods, and institutional practices. Rather than treating systems thinking as a standalone toolkit, it emphasises its enactment in practice — working with partial evidence, emergent outcomes, multiple time horizons, participation, power relations, and learning under uncertainty. This focus supports cross-fertilisation across evaluation communities and policy fields.

The strand contributes to:

Theory, by clarifying how systems and complexity perspectives are interpreted and transferred across evaluation practice;

Practice, by sharing concrete experiences and challenges faced by evaluators working in complex and turbulent contexts;

Policy dialogue, by exploring how systems-informed evaluation can strengthen learning-oriented and democratically grounded governance.

For contributors responding under Call B, the strand offers space to share empirical cases, methodological reflections, and practical examples illustrating how evaluation is adapting — or needs to adapt — to complex and changing systems. Strand coordinators from EES TWG8 will collaborate with Call B contributors to foster collaboration between experienced systems practitioners and early-career evaluators.