Festival of Learning 2026 - call for abstracts

Deadline - Friday, 17th October, 2025

The ABPCO Festival of Learning - Connect, Collaborate and Challenge

The Festival of Learning brings the association events community together, creating a space to connect, collaborate, and challenge. It provides valuable opportunities for sharing knowledge, exploring new ideas, and strengthening relationships across the industry. Building on the success of this year’s record-breaking event, the 2026 Festival promises to be bigger and better than ever.  

We’re moving to a new home at Nottingham Venues - East Midlands Conference Centre on the 29-30 April 2026. We are inviting abstract submissions to help shape the 2026 programme. Looking for engaging, inspiring and practical sessions that encourage learning, spark debate, and offer delegates new tools and perspectives to take back to their organisations. 

The abstract form can be found here 

Themes 

We welcome submissions across three broad themes: 

1. Personal Development – Skills, training, confidence building, and sharing new knowledge that helps individuals thrive.
2. Event Development – Case studies, new ideas, and innovations that change or improve the way events are designed, delivered, and experienced.
3. Industry – Trends, challenges, and solutions that are shaping the future of the association and not-for-profit events sector.

Formats 

To ensure variety and engagement, we are open to different types of sessions, including (but not limited to): 

• Main sessions (inspirational, high-impact presentations or panels)
• Breakouts or workshops (interactive, skills-based, or practical sessions)
• Quick-fire sessions (short, sharp presentations of new ideas or innovations)

Submission Criteria 

Your abstract will be assessed against the following: 

• Relevance for audience – Is the content tailored to the association and not-for-profit events community? We will also consider sessions that are relevant to specific audience groups (e.g. agency, in house or by level of experience.)
• Learning objectives – What will delegates gain from attending your session? 
• Engagement and delivery – Is the session designed to encourage interaction, discussion, or participation?
• How your proposal considers equity, diversity and inclusion - this could be through the topic, content, delivery or hearing from new perspectives.
• We also welcome submissions from both experienced presenters and new voices with fresh perspectives. 

Key Information 

• Deadline for submission:  17 October
• Notification of acceptance: from 3 November
• Further guidance and support will be provided by the ABPCO Learning Taskforce.

If you have any questions please email heatherlishman@abpco.org, and she will be happy to help.