When will Trump, Xi and Putin meet together?

The case for Yes is that the calendar now contains real opportunities rather than abstract speculation. Trump and Xi have already met, both sides have signaled additional bilateral encounters before year-end, and APEC in Shenzhen is the cleanest venue where Putin could plausibly be present as well. If Putin does attend and the three leaders are all in the same place at the same time, the chance of at least a brief encounter is meaningful, especially because leaders often use summit sidelines for opportunistic diplomacy even when nothing is formally announced in advance.

The case against Yes is that the available reporting still stops well short of a committed trilateral meeting. The Russian side has only said that nothing can be ruled out, which is much weaker than a real plan, and the Kremlin has not scheduled anything. That matters because this market likely resolves on a documented meeting rather than mere concurrent attendance at an event, so the bar is not just “could all be there,” but “did they actually meet together.” There is also a strong path to No if Putin skips Shenzhen, if one of the key summits changes format, or if the leaders keep their interactions bilateral and avoid a three-way photo opportunity.

Compared with the current market price of 35% Yes, my estimate is somewhat higher. I think the market may be underweighting the simple fact that two separate summit opportunities exist between now and year-end, and that the combination of Trump-Xi bilateral momentum plus Putin’s possible Shenzhen attendance gives the event a real, nontrivial path to resolution. That said, I would not go anywhere near the more aggressive high-60s or 70s pricing seen elsewhere, because the absence of an actual scheduled trilateral is still a major constraint and most of the probability is concentrated in a single contingent scenario.