ERS Congress 2026 — the world's largest respiratory meeting
The European Respiratory Society (ERS) Congress 2026 takes place from 5–9 September 2026 at Fira Barcelona Gran Via, Barcelona, Spain. The ERS Congress is the annual gathering of the world's respiratory community, bringing together clinicians, scientists, allied health professionals and patient representatives to showcase the latest advances in respiratory medicine and science. Registration is open.
This year's theme
The 2026 congress theme is “United for better breathing – partnership between patients, clinicians and researchers.” It reflects ERS's commitment to strengthening patient–professional partnerships, and shapes a programme in which lived experience sits alongside trial data and laboratory science rather than at the margins of it.
Scientific programme
The congress programme is exceptionally broad, covering asthma and severe asthma phenotyping, COPD, interstitial lung disease and pulmonary fibrosis, lung cancer and thoracic oncology, respiratory infections and tuberculosis, pulmonary vascular disease and pulmonary hypertension, cystic fibrosis and bronchiectasis, sleep-disordered breathing, respiratory critical care, paediatric respiratory medicine, occupational and environmental lung disease, smoking cessation and tobacco control, pulmonary rehabilitation and respiratory physiotherapy. Delegates can expect late-breaking clinical trial presentations, symposia, hands-on skills courses, clinical case-based sessions, guideline sessions and a large poster and thematic-poster programme. ERS also publishes a set of priority topics for each edition, signposting the areas where the Society sees the fastest movement in evidence.
Beyond the main scientific sessions, the congress hosts educational opportunities aimed squarely at trainees and early-career members, plus a dedicated Wednesday special programme. Abstract and clinical case submission for the 2026 edition has now closed, but the accepted material forms one of the densest concentrations of new respiratory research presented anywhere in a single week.
Who attends
ERS Congress typically draws well over 20,000 participants from more than 100 countries: pulmonologists and respiratory physicians, thoracic surgeons, intensivists, paediatric pulmonologists, respiratory therapists and physiotherapists, respiratory nurses, sleep specialists, clinical scientists, epidemiologists and industry researchers. For clinicians in Saudi Arabia and the GCC, it is the single most efficient way to capture a full year of respiratory evidence updates and to connect with European centres for fellowship, research collaboration and referral pathways.
Practical information
The congress is held at Fira Barcelona Gran Via, with venue, accommodation and travel guidance published on the ERS website. Registration-related queries are handled by K.I.T. Group GmbH. Looking further ahead, ERS Congress 2027 will be held 11–14 September in Milan, Italy, at Allianz MiCo.
