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Program notes — ESHG 2026

Pre-meeting prep page for the 59th European Human Genetics Conference, Svenska Mässan, Gothenburg, Sweden, June 13 – 16, 2026 (pre-conference courses Jun 11 – 12). ~5 weeks out as of today (May 11, 2026).

Programme-at-a-Glance is public; ~130 confirmed speakers listed; session grid (PL1–PL7, E01–E07, I01–I18, S01–S26, C01–C41) released. Award-lecture speaker assignments (Mendel / ESHG Award / ELPAG / Young Investigator) not yet matched to specific people in public materials — flagged inline. EJHG abstract supplement expected ~week of the meeting.

Key dates

Date Event Notes
Apr 16, 2026 Last day for 75% registration refund Past
May 11, 2026 Today — T-33 days to opening plenary Vault scaffold landing now
May 13, 2026 Lunch pre-order deadline Administrative
May 21, 2026 Last day for 25% registration refund / final cancellation window After this no refunds
Jun 11 – 12, 2026 Pre-conference courses (Thu – Fri) Notably the Clinical NGS Data Interpretation Course (full-day, both days)
Jun 12, 2026 Registration desk opens 14:00–18:00 Friday afternoon
Jun 13, 2026 (Sat) PL1 Opening Plenary 14:00–15:45 Conference opens
Jun 14, 2026 (Sun) Plenary + concurrent symposia + concurrent sessions First full day of science
Jun 15, 2026 (Mon) Plenary + concurrent symposia + concurrent sessions Densest scientific day
Jun 16, 2026 (Tue) Closing day; PL7 Closing Awards Session 15:20–16:00 Meeting ends 16:00
~Jun 13–16, 2026 EJHG abstract supplement publication Per prior-year pattern

Concurrent meetings the same week (note Sweden double-header):

  • EHA 2026 — Stockholm, Jun 11 – 14 (../eha-2026/). Hematology with strong clonal-hematopoiesis / sickle-cell gene-therapy / Karolinska threads. Gothenburg ↔ Stockholm ~3.5h train.
  • ASCO 2026 — Chicago, May 29 – Jun 2 (../asco-2026/). Heme + solid-tumor practice-changing readouts immediately precede ESHG by ~10 days.

Venue + logistics

  • Svenska Mässan (Swedish Exhibition & Congress Centre) — Mässans Gata/Korsvägen, 412 94 Göteborg, Sweden.
  • Hybrid format; virtual platform mirror for plenary sessions; on-demand replay post-meeting via the ESHG learning platform (~30 days).
  • No cash payments accepted on-site; lost-badge replacement EUR 50; WiFi venue-wide.
  • Conference organizer: Wiener Medizinische Akademie GmbH (conference@eshg.org · +43 1 405 13 83 35).

Programme structure (from the public Programme-at-a-Glance)

Plenary Sessions (PL1–PL7)

  • PL1 — Opening Plenary · Sat Jun 13, 14:00–15:45. Welcome + opening lectures. Speakers TBA in public materials.
  • PL2–PL6 — Plenaries (Sun + Mon mornings) · Award Lectures and high-scoring abstract plenaries:
  • Mendel Lecture — society's international keynote · TBA
  • ESHG Award Lecture — European mid-career to senior recognition · TBA
  • ELPAG Award Lecture — Ethics and Public Policy track recognition · TBA
  • Young Investigator Awards — trainee plenary slots · TBA, typically announced ~April
  • PL7 — Closing Awards Session · Tue Jun 16, 15:20–16:00. Awards summary + closing remarks.

Educational Sessions (E01–E07)

Topical state-of-the-art tutorials, not data-presenting but heavily attended:

  • E-track topics confirmed in public Programme-at-a-Glance: Clinical NGS interpretation, AI in functional genomics, disease modeling, newborn screening, long-read sequencing, ELSI in AI genomics, extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA).
  • The ecDNA Educational is the standout cancer-relevant entry — ecDNA biology crossing from AACR / ASHG into ESHG educational programming for the first time at this scale.

Interactive Sessions (I01–I18)

ESHG-signature format with audience polling / discussion:

  • Confirmed topics: episignatures, dysmorphology (two parallel sessions), genome browsers, pharmacogenomics, structural variants, reproductive carrier screening, genetic counseling tools.

Concurrent Symposia (S01–S26)

The high-density scientific spine of the meeting:

  • Confirmed topics: GWAS studies, chromosome X genetics, rare cancers, repeat expansions, prenatal testing, polygenic scores, cancer mechanisms, gene editing, evolutionary genomics, health economics in genomic medicine.
  • Cancer-relevant S-tracks: rare cancers, polygenic scores (cancer-PRS subset), cancer mechanisms.

Concurrent Sessions (C01–C41)

Submitted-abstract-driven parallel sessions:

  • Confirmed topics: carrier screening, intellectual disability, cancer research, metabolic disorders, neurogenetics, emerging therapeutic approaches.

Pre-conference courses (Jun 11 – 12)

  • Clinical NGS Data Interpretation Course (full-day both days) — the flagship European clinical-lab training course of the year. Content overlap with cancer somatic / germline variant interpretation.
  • Society and consortium satellite meetings.

Cancer-genomics-relevant watch list

Track headline talks across these sessions; populate talks/<slug>.md from each:

Cohort plenaries (most likely S-track or plenary)

  1. FinnGen R13 — next release of the Finnish biobank, ~520k participants expected, cancer-relevant pheWAS + drug-target validation continues to be ESHG-anchor content. Expected per FinnGen public release cadence.
  2. UK Biobank WGS + proteomics cancer overlay — 500k WGS released 2023–24, multi-omics including Olink proteomics; expected cancer-PRS + hereditary-cancer prevalence updates. Expected per UKB Showcase release pattern.
  3. Generation R — Erasmus MC Rotterdam pediatric / early-life cohort; less cancer-direct but methods bleed into developmental cancer-predisposition.
  4. GeneRISK — Finnish polygenic-risk return-of-results pilot (FIMM / Univ. of Helsinki / Perola / Widén / Ripatti); cancer-PRS subset (breast / prostate / colorectal) included. First multi-year return-of-PRS-to-patients dataset including cancer endpoints. Expected per GeneRISK public timeline.
  5. Estonian Biobank cancer module — Univ. of Tartu / Mägi / Metspalu group; pan-cancer germline-somatic on national cohort.
  6. deCODE pan-cancer germline update — deCODE genetics; historically high large-effect cancer-predisposition variant discovery.
  7. GBMI / cross-biobank meta-analyses — Global Biobank Meta-analysis Initiative cancer cross-biobank meta-analyses (cancer-PRS cross-ancestry transferability).
  8. Genomics England / NHS GMS — UK 100k follow-on + NHS Genomic Medicine Service readouts; cancer-WGS NHS pathway data.

Cancer-genetics symposia (S-track)

  1. Rare Cancers symposium — overlaps AACR Rare Cancers track. European rare-cancer registries (EURACAN) anchor this. Expected per public Programme-at-a-Glance "rare cancers" S-track entry.
  2. Cancer Mechanisms symposium — mechanistic cancer-genetics; overlaps AACR Annual Meeting mechanism sessions. Expected per public Programme-at-a-Glance.
  3. Polygenic Scores symposium — cancer-PRS subset: breast (Mavaddat / Pharoah), prostate (Eeles / Schumacher), colorectal (Houlston / Tomlinson), lung. Cross-ancestry transferability + clinical-utility framing.

Hereditary cancer (S/C track)

  1. Hereditary breast / ovarian cancer panel-design — GC-HBOC (German Consortium for Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer), HEBON (Dutch), SweBCG (Swedish), CanRisk (UK risk-prediction model). Pan-European panel harmonization is a recurring theme.
  2. Lynch syndrome / colorectal cancer — InSiGHT consortium + European Lynch registries; immune-checkpoint MMR-deficiency framing.
  3. Li-Fraumeni / TP53 mosaicism — methods bleed into cancer-mosaicism.
  4. Pediatric cancer predisposition — overlaps with ASHG Mendelian + rare-disease tracks.

Statistical-genetics (cancer subset)

  1. Cancer-PRS clinical utility — trial-stratification feasibility, cross-ancestry transferability.
  2. Clonal hematopoiesis at population scale (CHIP) — UKB + FinnGen CHIP overlays; bridges to EHA 2026 (same week!) and ASH 2026 MN-predisposition.

Pharmacogenomics in oncology

  1. Ubiquitous-PGx readouts — LUMC / Swen / van der Wouden; DPYD-guided 5-FU dosing real-world Dutch + Nordic data; UGT1A1-guided irinotecan; TPMT-guided thiopurines; CYP2D6-guided tamoxifen.
  2. Nordic PGx registries — Karolinska / Uppsala oncology-drug genotyping rollouts.

Methods / tools

  1. Foundation models for variant effect (E-track AI in Functional Genomics + S-track polygenic-scores spillover) — AlphaMissense follow-ons, ESM / EVO genomic models, RNA-LM successors.
  2. Long-read clinical sequencing (E-track Long-read sequencing) — PacBio HiFi + ONT R10 clinical-grade pipelines; European clinical-genome programs (Genomics England, NHS GMS, French Plan France Médecine Génomique).
  3. Episignatures (I-track) — methylation-based classification for cancer-predisposition syndromes; overlap with cancer tumor-classification methylation panels (DKFZ classifier).
  4. Pangenome / HPRC — clinical applications of pangenome reference; European pangenome-reference initiative if presented.
  5. AI dysmorphology (I-track Dysmorphology, two parallel sessions) — Face2Gene successors, DeepGestalt-style models; indirect cancer-predisposition syndrome recognition.

ELSI / ELPAG

  1. EU AI Act overlay on clinical genomics (E-track ELSI in AI Genomics) — first major meeting where the EU AI Act clinical-deployment framing for foundation models is explicit.
  2. GDPR + cross-border biobanking — recurring; relevance to cancer-cohort data sharing across European national systems.
  3. Return of polygenic risk — pairs with GeneRISK cohort talk.

Award-lecture watch list

  • Mendel Lecture (PL slot) — society international keynote · recipient TBA. Speculation watch: international landmark-genetics figure; historically has gone to figures across structural variants, single-cell, statistical genetics. Cancer-relevance varies.
  • ESHG Award Lecture (PL slot) — European mid-career to senior · recipient TBA. Speculation watch: European figures in clinical genomics / methods who haven't taken the lecture before.
  • ELPAG Award Lecture (PL slot) — Ethics and Public Policy · recipient TBA. Speculation watch: figures working at the intersection of EU AI Act, GDPR, and genomic data governance.
  • Young Investigator Awards (plenary slots) — Trainee awardees · announced ~April, names not yet in public materials accessed. Often high-signal across all tracks.

Update this section once the public award-recipient list is posted (typically within a few weeks of the meeting).

Programme reconciliation steps

  1. Pull EJHG abstract supplement when published (~week of meeting). For each shortlist entry above, capture: full title, authors + affiliations, abstract body, EJHG DOI, session ID / slot / time.
  2. Match speakers from the public Speakers page (~130 confirmed) against shortlist anchor talks. Build talks/<slug>.md files for the cancer-genomics-relevant subset (expected ~30–50 high-priority talks).
  3. Flag preprint / paper companions — search bioRxiv / medRxiv by author for talks accompanied by an in-press / preprint manuscript (typical for plenary slots).
  4. Reconcile against ASHG 2026 master talk list (../ashg-2026/talks/index.md) — many cohort + methods talks will appear at both. Tag ESHG-first / ASHG-update pattern.

Sources