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ASCO GI 2026

2026 ASCO Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium — Moscone West, San Francisco, CA · January 8 – 10, 2026. ~3,500 in-person attendees + virtual track. Co-sponsored by ASCO, ASTRO, AGA, and SSO; the dominant GI-cancer clinical-readout meeting of the year and a curtain-raiser for the GI track at ASCO 2026 (May 29 – Jun 2, McCormick Place).

Status: Retrospective vault — meeting closed four months ago (Jan 8–10, 2026). All abstract embargoes long since lifted; trial pages can cite the ASCO Meeting Library directly. Continuity link forward to the ASCO main meeting matters most here: several of the GI-track LBAs at ASCO 2026 (Rasolute-302 daraxonrasib Plenary; HERIZON-GEA-01 follow-up; BREAKWATER OS update) had their pivotal or precursor readouts at ASCO GI 2026 in January, and the discussant framing from January is the prior the May discussants will be reacting to.

Why this is in the vault

ASCO GI is the subspecialty Plenary for GI oncology — the place pancreatic, CRC, gastric/GEJ, biliary, HCC, esophageal, neuroendocrine, and anal readouts land first. Roughly 700 oral + poster abstracts across three days, with a 4-track plenary-style format (CRC + anal Day 1; pancreatic + small-bowel + neuroendocrine + HCC + biliary Day 2; esophageal + gastric Day 3). The discussant culture is denser than ASCO main meeting — each oral session has a named GI subspecialist framing the data in real time.

The vault's GI sibling structure:

  • ASCO GI (Jan) — subspecialty readouts. Targeted-therapy biomarker-selected populations (HER2+, FGFR2+, IDH1-mut, BRAF-V600E, MSI-H, KRAS-G12C/G12D, claudin 18.2). Phase 1/2 dose expansion + Phase 2/3 confirmatory.
  • ASCO main meeting (May/Jun) — the broader GI track, including phase 3 OS confirmations of January's PFS readouts (e.g., Rasolute-302 Plenary LBA5 in May builds on daraxonrasib Phase 1/2 ASCO GI Jan 2025).
  • ESMO GI (Jul) — European subspecialty follow-up; later in the cycle, often EU-perspective updates.
  • ESMO main meeting (Oct) — global GI track + late-year OS readouts.

ASCO GI 2026 anchors the January end of this cycle and the discussant framing here propagates through the year.

What we have to work with

The meeting closed four months ago. All sources below are populated:

Source Coverage Notes
ASCO Meeting Library full-text abstracts, slides for some sessions meetings.asco.org — primary source; abstracts indexed by year=2026, meeting=Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium
JCO 4_suppl issue peer-reviewed abstract publication abstracts indexed at ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.2026.44.4_suppl.*
ASCO Daily News — GI issue meeting-day editorial recaps dailynews.ascopubs.org
The ASCO Post weekly recap issues mid-Jan – mid-Feb 2026 ascopost.com
OncLive / Targeted Oncology / CancerNetwork discussant-level depth onclive.com, targetedonc.com
VJOncology / OncoDaily / OncUpdates / CURE video stand-ups, expert reaction vjoncology.com, oncodaily.com
GuidelineCentral / GI Oncology Now conference preview + post-meeting digests guidelinecentral.com, gioncologynow.com
Company press releases toplines (mostly pre-meeting, full data on-day) wire-service syndication; Jazz Pharma, Revolution Medicines, Pfizer/Seagen, AstraZeneca, BeiGene, Boehringer, Incyte, Astellas

The ASCO Meeting Library is again the load-bearing primary source — per-trial pages cite the abstract DOI and the JCO 4_suppl publication, not the company press release.

Program shape

ASCO GI 2026 ran Thursday January 8 (opening sessions, CRC + anal) through Saturday January 10 (esophageal + gastric), three days, Moscone West.

  • No formal Plenary slot (unlike ASCO main meeting). Instead, each disease group runs a General Session with the highest-impact orals: ~3–5 abstracts framed by a senior discussant, with the day's "headlines" emerging organically from these.
  • Day 1 (Thu Jan 8) — CRC, anal: CRC General Session anchored by BREAKWATER cohort 3 OS update (encorafenib + cetuximab + FOLFIRI in BRAF-V600E mCRC), CIRCULATE-NA ctDNA-guided adjuvant updates, FOxTROT-2 elderly perioperative. Anal cancer: POD1UM-303 / EA2176 retifanlimab maintenance follow-up.
  • Day 2 (Fri Jan 9) — pancreatic, neuroendocrine, hepatobiliary, small-bowel: Daraxonrasib + chemo combination updates (Revolution Medicines, ahead of Plenary LBA5 at ASCO 2026); RMC-9805 / zoldonrasib KRAS-G12D PDAC Phase 1 expansion (30% ORR, 80% DCR previously read at ASCO GI 2025; mature follow-up here). HCC: KEYNOTE-937 (adjuvant pembro, negative) + TACTICS-L (atezo-bev vs TACE intermediate-stage HCC). Biliary: REFOCUS (lirafugratinib in FGFR2-fusion CCA, ~100-patient Phase 2, durable responses); IDH1-mutant CCA combination data.
  • Day 3 (Sat Jan 10) — gastric/GEJ, esophageal: HERIZON-GEA-01 zanidatamab + chemo ± tislelizumab in 1L HER2+ G/GEJ (Jazz Pharma; positive PFS for both Ziihera arms vs trastuzumab + chemo; OS gain for IO-containing arm — practice-changing). ILUSTRO updates (zolbetuximab claudin 18.2 follow-up). Esophageal: HER2 ADC follow-ups; CheckMate-577 adjuvant nivolumab long-term.

The meeting hit 5,000+ in-person + virtual attendees (per ASCO press preview), an increase over 2025.

Organization

conferences/asco-gi-2026/
├── index.md             # this page
├── program-notes.md     # 4-month retrospective: tracks, headline readouts by disease, discussant framing
└── trials/              # per-trial template + master trial index
    └── index.md         # template + retrospective master index

The trials/ directory mirrors the ASCO 2026 sibling vault. Each trial gets one Markdown file (deferred — the priority for May 2026 is the ASCO main-meeting vault, but the GI vault holds the upstream context).

What's different from ASCO main meeting

  • Smaller, denser, more biomarker-focused. ~3,500 attendees vs ~40,000. Every abstract has a named biomarker selection criterion in the title — KRAS-G12D, BRAF-V600E, FGFR2-fusion, IDH1-R132, HER2+, MSI-H, claudin 18.2+, RET-fusion, NTRK-fusion. The era of "all-comer chemo trials" is over for GI.
  • Phase 1/2 dose-expansion data is the headline, not Phase 3. Unlike ASCO main where Plenary is randomized phase 3, ASCO GI's most-discussed abstracts are often Phase 1 dose-expansion biomarker-defined cohorts (e.g., RMC-9805 KRAS-G12D PDAC, lirafugratinib FGFR2 CCA, divarasib KRAS-G12C CRC). These define the next year's pivotal designs.
  • Discussant culture is denser. Three days, ~30 oral sessions, each with a named discussant — discussants here typically frame the field for 6–12 months until ASCO main meeting builds on it.
  • Strong ctDNA / MRD presence. CIRCULATE-NA, CIRCULATE-Japan, GALAXY, COLOMATE, DYNAMIC follow-ups — ASCO GI is where ctDNA-guided adjuvant trial design gets stress-tested before it migrates to broader oncology.

[Forward-looking — flagged] Several of the May/Jun 2026 GI-track readouts at ASCO main meeting are direct sequels to January's ASCO GI sessions:

  • Rasolute-302 daraxonrasib Plenary LBA5 (May 31) — builds on daraxonrasib Ph1/2 expansion data presented at ASCO GI Jan 2026 + AACR Apr 2026 updates. Discussant framing of "what counts as a meaningful PDAC OS improvement" was laid down at ASCO GI by the pancreatic discussant.
  • HERIZON-GEA-01 follow-up — January's pivotal Phase 3 readout (Jazz Pharma zanidatamab) generated FDA submission activity in Q1 2026; ASCO 2026 May likely sees subgroup analysis + biomarker correlates.
  • BREAKWATER continued OS maturation — cohort 3 OS readout from January (~30 vs 15 mo) will be reconciled with later follow-up at ASCO 2026.
  • KRAS-G12D combinations — Revolution Medicines' next disclosure step is at AACR 2026 (Apr) and ASCO main (May), with January's ASCO GI as the foundation.
  • ASCO 2026 — May/Jun main meeting; GI track sequels above.
  • AACR 2026 — KRAS-class biology + GI mechanism sessions (Apr); RAS-inhibitor preclinical work backing ASCO Plenary LBA5.
  • JPM 2026 — Jazz Pharma, Revolution Medicines, BeiGene, Astellas all presented at JPM Jan 13–16, 2026 — same week as ASCO GI. Investor framing of GI assets here aligned with the clinical readouts in San Francisco.
  • ESMO 2026 — Oct 2026 European GI track; later-cycle OS confirmations.
  • Conferences timeline — ASCO GI's January slot in the year's oncology cycle.

Sources