GLASGOW—Negotiators seeking to reach a global deal to slow climate change entered the last scheduled day of talks at a United Nations summit here still wrestling with big differences over the wording of what they hope will be a meaningful agreement.

Officials involved in coordinating the talks said they expected negotiations to continue at least into Friday evening. Negotiators have made progress narrowing some differences, according to several people familiar with the talks and based on fresh draft texts circulated on Thursday...

GLASGOW—Negotiators seeking to reach a global deal to slow climate change entered the last scheduled day of talks at a United Nations summit here still wrestling with big differences over the wording of what they hope will be a meaningful agreement.

Officials involved in coordinating the talks said they expected negotiations to continue at least into Friday evening. Negotiators have made progress narrowing some differences, according to several people familiar with the talks and based on fresh draft texts circulated on Thursday and Friday.

“Overall we are getting closer to a landing ground,” said one official involved in the talks.

Negotiators said a big gap remained between developed and developing countries over climate financing. Rich countries have committed to funneling money to poorer countries to help them move toward lower-emissions energy sources and protect themselves from the worst effects of climate change. Negotiators said gaps over the amount are still wide.

Members of the Chinese delegation at the COP26 summit on Friday.

Photo: paul ellis/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

A draft text on climate finance circulated Thursday included a goal to channel $1.3 trillion annually, but a new draft released Friday deleted that language because of opposition, negotiators said, from the U.S., the European Union and other wealthy nations. Governments have agreed to hold a series of meetings to decide on a new goal in 2024, the new text says.

Officials have faced a fundamental math problem on emissions reductions. Ahead of the summit, called COP26, most of the world’s countries committed to emissions cuts, but they weren’t steep enough, scientists say, to limit temperature rises to well under 2 degrees Celsius—and preferably to 1.5 degrees—above preindustrial-era temperatures. Countries committed to this ambition at a similar summit in Paris in 2015, and a big goal for the Glasgow gathering is reaffirming and hardening that pledge.

To bridge the emissions gap, negotiators have inserted language in a draft text that requests countries to update their commitments by the end of next year to encourage more cuts in the near future. It is unclear whether such a move has enough support among key players to make it part of any final deal.

In a speech kicking off the COP26 summit in Glasgow, President Biden urged world leaders to be a part of the “decisive decade” and work to combat climate change. The gathering follows the G-20 summit, where leaders agreed on only a few specifics. Photo: Evan Vucci/AFP/Getty Images The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition

Friday’s new draft text “appears to deal with many of the major issues that need to be resolved,” said Bob Ward, policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. “But some important aspects still need to be finalized and may take some time to conclude.”

At this stage in the summit’s final negotiations, talks are centered on often-technical wording or sensitivities over language by sometimes-small blocs of countries. An earlier draft circulated this week, for instance, called on the world to end subsidies for fossil fuel. Negotiators who fought for that language hailed it as a success.

By Friday, the working draft called on winding down “inefficient” fossil-fuel subsidies, and one official involved in the talks said it is widely viewed by negotiators that any reference to a phaseout would ultimately drop out of the final text. Big oil producers such as Saudi Arabia have fought to exclude any such language in the final document.

An unusual joint declaration earlier in the week by the U.S. and China, rivals and the world’s top two emitters, provided a boost to negotiators. But the agreement didn’t provide specific solutions to the big stumbling blocks negotiators have faced.

In the early days of the two-week summit, some participants were buoyed by new emissions targets, including one by India, which committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2070. The summit also provided a venue for a series of more limited moves, including a U.S.-led coalition that agreed to cut methane emissions. In its joint statement with the U.S., China also promised to reduce methane emissions but stopped short of joining the coalition.

Write to Sarah McFarlane at sarah.mcfarlane@wsj.com and Max Colchester at max.colchester@wsj.com