Meetings

John’s Top Recurring Meetings
Virtual meetings are easy to attend, but regular attendance at annual in-person events is the key to building your network and gaining deeper insight. My personal favorites for such in-person meetings are below. Of particular value for developers, the small meeting format of BEAM’s AMR Conference (March) and GAMRIC (September-October; formerly, the ESCMID-ASM conference series) creates excellent global networking. IDWeek (October) and ECCMID (April) are much larger meetings but also provide opportunities for networking with a substantial, focused audience via their Pipeline sessions. Hope to see you there!

• [LATE-BREAKER ABSTRACTS open soon] 22-24 Sep 2026 (Lisbon, Portugal): The 2nd GAMRIC, the Global AMR Innovators Conference (London, UK). Formerly the ESCMID-ASM (or ASM-ESCMID depending on location) Joint Conference on Drug Development for AMR, 2026 will be the 11th year for this series that is now under the joint sponsorship of CARB-X, ESCMID, BEAM Alliance, GARDP, LifeArc, Boston University, and AMR.Solutions. The ongoing series employs the successful format of prior meetings with a single-track meeting and substantial networking time. The 2025 meeting was a sell-out success: a written summary is here and the videos are here. Registration for the 2026 meeting is now open and the near-final program is here: in addition to a keynote lecture by Karen Bush on the threat to beta-lactams due to the emergence of PBP3 mutations, there are sessions on funding, access, program design for narrow-spectrum agents such as phage, development for pediatrics, and more. Registration is ongoing — register now as early-bird rates end on 15 July! The main abstract submission window is closed but late-breaker abstracts will be accepted 8-22 July 2026.
• 21-24 Oct 2026 (Washington, DC, USA): IDWeek 2026, the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. I would expect the program to continue to provide a substantial opportunity to present a product to a large audience (see also adjacent note about ESCMID) as well as opportunities to present at an IDWeek Pipeline Session. Go here to register.
• 23-24 Mar 2027 (Basel, Switzerland): The 10th AMR Conference (3-4 Mar 2026) is now over and offered a rich program that included a 10-year retrospective (we’ve done a lot!), regulatory updates, discussions of how to pursue development in China, and much more … in addition to being a superb opportunity for networking! I am told the session videos will soon be available on the conference website.
• 9-13 April 2027 (Stockholm, Sweden): ESCMID Global 2027, the annual meeting of the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. Details won’t be out for some months, but the website is here. I do know that the meeting schedule will again include a Science Policy Forum on Friday 9 April 2027 (see here the newsletter about the 2026 science policy forum) and all who are interested in Pull incentives and the antibiotic ecosystem should plan to be there!)..

  Upcoming meetings of interest to the AMR community:

• [NEW] 22 July (virtual, 2-3.30p CET): The WHO AMR Department and the WHO GAP-r (Global Accelerator for Pediatric Formulations) are hosting an industry dialogue on pediatric and neonatal antibiotic development. The discussion will cover timing of pediatric and neonatal studies, extrapolation from adult data, feasibility of trial designs in children and neonates, and variability in regulatory expectations across jurisdictions. This topic is a long-standing source of frustration for developers (see the 7 Apr 2021 newsletter: “Developing antibiotics for children: There are no easy answers”) and I am glad to see WHO convening discussions on ways to facilitate pediatric work! Go here to register.
  
• [NEW] 27 July (virtual, 2-3.30p CET): Inaugural webinar of the WHO Bacteriophage Community of Practice (CoP), a global platform for knowledge exchange across the bacteriophage ecosystem. You can register for the webinar here. You will also want to join the CoP itself — for this, you need a free account WHO Integrated Health Services (IHS) Hub account; look for  “WHO AMR Community Exchange” and then for the “Bacteriophage group” under “Explore our groups.”
• 22-24 Sep 2026 GAMRIC (Lisbon, Portugal), the Global AMR Innovators Conference (London, UK; formerly the ESCMID-ASM Joint Conference on Drug Development for AMR). See list of Top Recurring meetings, above..
• 10-18 Oct 2026 (Annecy, France, residential in-person program): ICARe (Interdisciplinary Course on Antibiotics and Resistance) … and 2026 will be the 10th year for this program. Patrice Courvalin orchestrates content with the support of an all-star scientific committee and faculty. The resulting soup-to-nuts training covers all aspects of antimicrobials, is very intense, and routinely gets rave reviews! Registration for 2026 is now open and runs through June 21, 2026. Go here to register!
• 21-24 Oct 2026 (Washington, DC, USA): IDWeek 2026. See list of Top Recurring meetings, above.
• 10-13 November 2026 (Madrid, Spain): The International Society for Infectious Diseases (ISID) has announced its 21st International Congress on Infectious Diseases (ICID). Register and view the preliminary program here (Early bird closes 30 July 2026); abstract deadline is 28 April 2026.
• [NEW] 27-29 Jan 2027 (Las Vegas, USA): IMARI (Interdisciplinary Meeting on Antimicrobial Resistance and Innovation) sponsored by IDSA and ASM. Abstract submissions are open through 19 Aug; registration and housing will open later this summer.
• 23-24 Mar 2027 (Basel, Switzerland): The 11th AMR Conference sponsored by the BEAM Alliance. See list of Top Recurring meetings, above.
• 9-13 April 2027 (Stockholm, Sweden): ESCMID Global 2026, the annual meeting of the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. See Recurring Meetings list, above.
• ??? Mar 2028 (yes, that’s 2028, with location TBD): The 2028 Gordon Research Conference (GRC, https://www.grc.org/) entitled “Antibacterials of Tomorrow to Combat the Global Threat of Antimicrobial Resistance” and its related Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) for young doctoral and post-doctoral researchers will be sometime in March 2028. The organizers hope to coordinate dates and location with the 2028 BEAM-AMR meeting. Details to follow — mark your calendar!

Self-paced courses, online training materials, and other reference materials:

• OpenWHO: “Antimicrobial Resistance in the environment: key concepts and interventions.” Per the webpage for the course, it will teach you “…why addressing AMR in the environment is essential and gain insights into how action can be taken to prevent and control AMR in the environment at the national level.” This course builds on WHO’s 2024 Guidance on wastewater and solid waste management for manufacturing of antibiotics. For further reading, see also the 25 Sep 2023 newsletter entitled “Manufacturing underpins both access and stewardship: Cefiderocol as a case study” and the 28 Jan 2024 newsletter entitled “EMA Concept Paper: Guidance on manufacturing of phage products”.
• GARDP’s REVIVE website provides an encyclopedia covering a range of R&D terms, recordings of prior GARDP webinars, a variety of viewpoint articles, and more! Check it out! 
• GARDP’s https://antibioticdb.com/ is an open-access database of antibacterial agents.  
• The CARB-X website provides a range of recordings from its webinars, bootcamps, and more. A bit of browsing would be time well spent!
• British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy offers an eLearning section: Education – The British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.