Have you ever thought about convening an EGU session instead of just attending them? Until September 16 you have the chance to do just that for the 2026 General Assembly, which will be taking place from May 3 to 8 2026 in Vienna, Austria.
Convening a session can sound a bit intimidating, especially if you’ve never done it before or if you are an early career scientist. However, it’s an incredibly enriching experience and well worth the effort. Here is everything you have to know.
1 – Find a Topic and Co-Conveners
First off, you need to settle on a topic and find your co-conveners, i.e. the team who co-organizes the session with you before and during the conference.
Has there been a field you’ve been working in that hasn’t seen a lot of exposure at the EGU General Assembly, but would be a perfect fit? Do you already know people who work on similar topics who could be interested in submitting an abstract?
That’s the ticket. But keep in mind: A scientific session should be of broad interest and aim to bring together scientists who are not already linked, e.g. via a European research project
As for your co-conveners, you can build a team of up to four people with whom to propose your session. These are typically your collaborators or colleagues you know who work in the same field but cover different aspects of the topic and come from diverse institutions.
Once you have an idea for a topic, check out the provisional programme to see if anyone else has already submitted something similar. Some convener teams propose the same session every year. Other sessions are one-offs that may be happening one year but not another.
If your session idea is unique, you can go ahead and draft your proposal. But what if it isn’t? What if someone else has already proposed a similar session? In that case, you can reach out to the conveners and express your interest in joining their team. In many cases, conveners will be happy to have additional members on board who can promote the session among their networks.
Submit Your Session Proposal
Before you submit your proposal, you need to read the convener guidelines. They’ll tell you exactly how long a proposal needs to be and what elements it should include. Plus, they’ll give you solid insights into the general rules and restrictions, such as the fact that you can’t submit an abstract to your own session.
Once you are ready, you can submit your session proposal via the EGU26 website. Heads up, you and your co-conveners will all need a Copernicus ID!
After you’re logged in, start the submission process by selecting your session type, then choose the topic sub-group. Next, add details – your session’s title, description, short summary, and conveners. You’ll also be asked who is the main and the deputy convener in your session, and who will assign judges if any of your submitting authors want to participate in the Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) awards. Finally, you’ll have to give details on whether the session is co-sponsored by another division (e.g. hydrology and geomorphology), and if you plan to create a special issue in an EGU journal.
Once you have clicked the submit button, keep your fingers crossed and wait for the notification on whether your session has been accepted (late October or early November). Most sessions are accepted at this stage, as long as the proposals are well-written, clearly outline the topic of the session, and don’t overlap with any other proposals in the provisional programme. (Need inspiration on how to write a session description? Check out last year’s programme!)
Promote Your Session
After your session has been accepted, it’s key to promote the heck out of it, especially if it’s a brand-new topic since you need a minimum number of abstracts (typically five or six) for your session to move ahead.
Harness social media, mailing lists, and your own academic networks and those of your co-authors. Creating an eye-catching graphic can help you grab the attention of potential authors and talk to people you know who may be interested in presenting. Plus, a diverse co-convener team is key to attracting a good number of interesting contributions covering exactly the topic you had in mind.
You can also add an invited speaker. If you know someone whose main research topic fits your session to a T, you can ask if they could give the opening presentation, which typically lasts longer than other session presentations. Plus, if your invited speaker wants to submit another abstract to a session of their choice, they can – they’ll be exempt from EGU’s one-abstract limit.
Select Which Abstracts to Accept and Assign Presentation and Poster Slots
Once abstract submission closes in early January, you’ll know within a few days whether your session will move ahead, and – if so – which format it will take. To have a classic session organisation with an oral and a poster time block, you typically need around 20 abstracts. For a PICO session, you can count around 15. Smaller sessions may be poster-only.
If you have too few abstracts in your session, it may be merged with another session that is similar to yours in topic. If that is the case, your subdivision chair will reach out to you and put you in touch with the conveners of the session with which you’ll be merging. Then it will be up to you to combine your session descriptions and decide on the number and order of conveners. While this can seem daunting at first, it’s also a way of getting to know colleagues who work on similar topics as you!
Next, you and your co-conveners get to select the abstracts you choose to accept. This is a preliminary decision on whether the submissions meet your standards and match your session.
Finally, in the third phase, you can assign oral and poster presentations. It’s not always possible to match the preferences that authors indicated, since you only have a limited number of time slots for presentations. If you have to switch between one or the other, you can reach out to the authors and give them a heads-up.
If there are any questions or if you run into trouble, you can always reach out to your subdivision chair for help.
Chair Your Session
Finally, you and your co-conveners need to chair your session at the General Assembly in Vienna, with one person being formally assigned (in the program) as chair per oral and per poster session time block. The chair of oral time blocks should be there in advance (15 min) to meet the speakers and the conference staff (in charge of technical aspects).
What you have to do is to introduce authors and make sure that they stick to their assigned times. Manage questions from the audience and have a few of your own ready, just in case nobody else has any. If you’re convening a presentation session that also has a poster component, why not leave ten minutes free at the end of the timeslot for poster presenters to make 1 minute pitches to encourage poster session participation?
Once your session closes, you can kick back and relax. And don’t forget to stick around until the end of the week – on Friday evening, there’s the convener’s party where you can let your hair down and celebrate your success with all other people involved in the conference organisation!
