← News

News

Conferences on participatory sciences: open calls, autumn 2026

An overview of conferences on participatory sciences, citizen science, science communication and public engagement, as checked on 8 October 2026. The first part lists calls that are open now, in order of deadline. The second part lists events whose calls are closed or not yet open. None of these events is organised by Participio. Dates and deadlines change, so check the conference page before you plan.

Open now, by deadline

Open Science Festival 2027

Bamberg, Germany, 18-19 March 2027. Deadline: 15 October 2026 for lightning talks and workshops, 15 December 2026 for posters.

Part of the open science series run by universities in the German-speaking region. The audience is research support staff, librarians, data stewards and early career researchers rather than disciplinary scholars. The format is short and practical: five-minute lightning talks, 90-minute workshops and a tool marketplace. German is the official language, but English is welcome. Contributions go on Zenodo, so there is a citable output without peer review. Low cost, and a good place to share a method rather than a finding.

PCST 2027

Shanghai, China, 24-27 May 2027. Deadline: 19 October 2026, 250-word abstracts.

The conference of the Public Communication of Science and Technology Network, held every two years since 1989 and the global meeting point for the science communication field. Academics sit alongside museum staff, journalists, festival organisers and ministry people. There are six submission formats, including a three-minute lightning talk and an artistic performance slot. There are no proceedings, so the value is network and visibility, not a publication. Visa and travel costs for Shanghai need to be planned early.

CAPS 2027

Louisville, Kentucky, USA, 17-21 May 2027. Deadline: 20 October 2026 for organised sessions.

The Conference for Advancing Participatory Sciences, run by the Association for Advancing Participatory Sciences, formerly the US Citizen Science Association. The scope covers citizen science, community science, participatory action research and community-based monitoring, with strong environmental justice and community health strands. Practitioners are in the majority. The associated journal is Citizen Science: Theory and Practice. The October deadline is only for organised sessions, meaning symposia and workshops that you convene. The call for individual talks and posters opens later in the autumn. Published fees are USD 575 for non-members, USD 425 for members and USD 250 reduced, with waivers and stipends closing on 15 January 2027.

Ecsite 2027

Paris, France, 8-10 June 2027. Deadline: 27 October 2026, 23:59 CET.

The annual conference of the European network of science centres and museums, with around a thousand attendees, hosted by Universcience at the Cité des sciences et de l'industrie. It is a practitioner event on exhibition design, public programming, audience research and visitor studies. It is not a research conference and there are no proceedings. Sessions and deep-dive workshops need at least three presenters from three different countries, so the call is in practice an invitation to assemble a small international group. That makes it as useful for finding partners as for presenting.

8th Nordic STS Conference

Helsinki, Finland, 14-17 June 2027. Deadline: 30 October 2026 for session proposals.

The regional science and technology studies community, smaller and more collegial than the 4S or EASST meetings. The call has two stages: session proposals now, then papers from 1 December 2026 to 15 January 2027. It suits work framed as STS, for example how publics and expertise are constituted, more than applied engagement practice. No proceedings.

C&T 2027, Communities and Technologies

TU Delft, the Netherlands, 12-16 April 2027. Deadline: 9 November 2026 (anywhere on Earth) for papers, 11 December 2026 for workshops.

Run by EUSSET in the tradition of computer-supported cooperative work and human-computer interaction. This is the most conventionally academic call in this list: peer-reviewed full papers of 8,000 to 12,000 words, plus short and exploratory tracks. Topics are civic technology, community informatics and the participatory design of digital systems. Past editions were published in the ACM Digital Library. The 2027 organisers have not yet confirmed a publisher, so check before counting on indexing.

ICT4S 2027

Sorbonne University, Paris, France, 21-25 June 2027. Deadline: 30 November 2026 for workshops, 13 and 20 January 2027 for papers.

ICT for Sustainability, where computer science meets environmental sustainability. It is more technical than the other events here, with a strong strand on the environmental footprint of computing itself. For participation researchers the way in is engagement within sustainability technology, not the technology. It is the only call in this list with confirmed indexed proceedings: research papers go to IEEE Xplore, short papers to CEUR.

EUSEA 2027

University of Glasgow, United Kingdom, 19-20 May 2027, pre-conference on 18 May. Deadline: 7 December 2026, the call opens on 12 October 2026.

The European Science Engagement Association is the practitioner network for public engagement professionals: university engagement offices, science festivals, museums and the outreach teams of research institutes. It is smaller than Ecsite, and the formats reflect that, with scenario workshops and dialogue sessions instead of paper panels. The conference page shows both 2026 and 2027 in its dates, so confirm the dates with the organisers at info@eusea.info.

Closed or not yet open, worth noting in the calendar

  • ECSA conference (European Citizen Science Association). The conference is held every two years and was in Oulu in March 2026. ECSA 2028 will be in Lisbon, hosted by the Portuguese Citizen Science Network and NUCLIO. There are no dates or call yet, a call can be expected around mid-2027. A separate call for hosts for ECSA 2030 closes on 30 April 2027.
  • Citizen Science for Health 2027 (conference page). Odense, Denmark, 19-21 April 2027. Organised by Odense University Hospital and the University of Southern Denmark with the ECSA Citizen Science for Health working group. Abstracts closed on 14 September 2026, which is recent enough to ask about a waiting list.
  • Austrian Citizen Science Conference (ÖCSK) 2027 (event page). Vienna, Austria, 24-26 February 2027. Scientific contributions closed on 30 September 2026. We could not confirm whether a practice or poster deadline is still open.
  • 4S 2027 (Society for Social Studies of Science). Taipei, Taiwan, tentatively 25-28 August 2027, jointly with the Taiwan STS Association. The call for open panels usually opens between late October and mid November, so this is the one to watch in the coming weeks.
  • Living Knowledge Network (network site). The network of science shops and community-based research. Its 11th conference was in Gdańsk in July 2026, and the next would be in 2027 or 2028. It is the closest thing in Europe to a conference on community-based participatory research.
  • Participatory Design Conference. Held every two years, the 2026 edition was in Milan. No host has been announced for 2028. Following the 2026 schedule, a call for full papers would appear around mid-2027.
  • Transformations (Transformations Community). The host of the 2027 edition is to be announced in November 2026, so no call can be out before then.
  • OpenLivingLab Days 2027 (European Network of Living Labs). The annual event of ENoLL. The call for hosts closed in February 2026 and no host has been published yet. Calls for contributions usually open between February and April for a September event.
  • Democracy R&D Global Conference 2027 (Democracy R&D). Bogotá, Colombia, 2-5 June 2027, with a post-conference meeting in Brasília. The network for deliberative democracy and citizens' assemblies. No call has been published, and past editions were partly by invitation, so check whether open submission exists.
  • CARN 2026 (conference page). Utrecht, the Netherlands, 5-7 November 2026. The conference of the Collaborative Action Research Network. Abstracts closed in May, but registration is open until 22 October 2026, so it is possible to attend without presenting. Fees are EUR 425 for members and EUR 475 for non-members.
  • CS4Water Conference 2027 (conference site). Cape Town, South Africa, 29 June to 1 July 2027. The second edition of the international conference on citizen science and water, and the first on the African continent. Save the date only, no call yet.

EASST is held every two years and the 2026 edition is over, the next is in 2028. The conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS) is in Warsaw in 2028.