The European Space Weather Week (ESWW) conference is an excellent opportunity for people from all over the world to gather and discuss the most recent insights in space weather and in space climate, and to address the emerging challenges and impacts. Science, observations, data exploitation, data standards and metadata, service development, operational models, engineering and industrial needs are all important aspects of space weather that are addressed. In line with this, the overarching theme for ESWW 2026 in Florence is ‘Data-driven and physics-based cross-scale space weather’. ESWW will be a hybrid conference.
One of the strengths of ESWW is that participants can contribute significantly to its content through parallel sessions, plenary sessions and Topical Discussion Meetings (TDMs). The call for sessions is opened during the following period:
Opening date - 16th February 2026
Closing date (plenary and parallel) - 22nd March 2026
Closing date (TDMs) - 5th April 2026
The PC strongly encourages those who have not previously proposed a session to do so. In line with our commitment to diversity and inclusion, we welcome and encourage applications from conveners of all backgrounds, including but not limited to, different career stages, geographical locations, ability, genders, and ethnicities.
We look forward to receiving your submissions and to a successful and engaging ESWW.
Topical Discussion Meetings (TDMs) are an important component of the European Space Weather Week (ESWW) – a format meant to facilitate engaging debates within the heliospheric, and space weather and space climate communities. These meetings provide the opportunity for interested participants to address key issues in a community forum style that complements the conference sessions.
We invite and encourage ESWW participants to submit brief proposals for TDMs for the upcoming ESWW 2026 meeting in Florence, Italy. The submission opens on Monday, 16th February 2026 and closes on Sunday, 05th April 2026. Potential conveners must describe in dedicated fields of the proposal form the target community, the expected outcome of the meeting, and its potential impact.
Please see the detailed set of TDM preparation guidelines, which we expect TDM leaders will follow. These are based on previous experience and will help you plan better your forum for community discussions, debates, and interactivity. They will help enhance the TDM experience at ESWW.
The ESWW PC will carefully review the TDM proposals and select those that will be included in this year’s conference programme. Each submission will be evaluated based on its preparation, topicality, and potential to encourage discussion. Due to the high level of interest, only a selection of the proposed TDMs will take place. Proposers will be notified of the selection result in the second quarter of 2026.
To ensure the dissemination of the TDMs' outcomes and inform the community about a discussion they missed, the Convenors of successful TDM proposals are required to provide a Summary Report, including any actions/outcomes, within two weeks of the TDM taking place at the ESWW.
Plenary sessions at ESWW form a key component of the conference, open to all attendees. They provide an opportunity to share knowledge and the latest advancements with a broad audience within the space weather community.
This year, the ESWW will host four plenary sessions. Two plenary sessions will feature distinguished presentations proposed by the conveners of parallel sessions. These plenaries will promote parallel sessions to a broader audience. Distinguished presentations may include cutting-edge research, impactful applications, or review talks but shall always incorporate sufficient contextual information for the broader audience with a longer duration assigned to permit this. Arrangements for these sessions will be made after the abstract selection process for the parallel sessions is finalised.
The other two plenary sessions will be dedicated to topics proposed by the community. We invite the community to submit proposals for these two dedicated plenary sessions. We seek proposals that are engaging, of a particularly high-standard, relevant to the broader space weather and space climate community, and designed to stimulate discussion and debate. Topics to be covered may encompass one or more of the following areas (interdisciplinary topics are encouraged): the ESWW2026 theme, “Data-driven and physics-based cross-scale space weather”, policy, end-user needs, end-user applications, transversal or inter-domain connections, instrumentation, observations, extension/improvement of ground-based instrumentation, new missions, R2O2R, modelling, data analysis techniques, space climate, or other subjects with broad appeal.
The dedicated plenary sessions will feature scene-setting talks, but the main focus will be on a panel discussion. Introductory presentations by panellists will be kept to a minimum. For more details, please refer to the plenary convener guidelines. The panellists will be selected by the conveners, and panellists will be required to submit an abstract. In due course, a call will open for abstract submissions to these sessions, conveners will have the option of asking those submitting abstracts to become a panellist, but the default format will be posters. These sessions will be chaired by experts in the field who are comfortable with moderating.
In the plenary proposal submission form, please include the following:
The Programme Committee (PC) will review all plenary session proposals and will independently select those best tailored to the event (if the criteria for plenary sessions are not met, the PC may choose not to select any). Proposed session conveners will be notified in April on the output of this selection. A call for session abstracts will follow after the selection of all sessions of the conference. Guidelines on how to organise and manage the sessions will be shared with the conveners. In preparation of the final programme, conveners will be asked to provide the names of two to four Chairs (moderators). One of these, the Lead Chair (moderator), will already have been provided in the initial proposal. At least one Chair should be a convener. At least one Chair will be attending in-person, in Umeå. At least one Chair will take responsibility to monitor online comments.
Those interested in convening a parallel session at ESWW2026 may submit a proposal in one of the following four formats:
Proposing a Space Weather Research (SWR) Parallel Session
When submitting a proposal to the Space Weather Research session, please select one of the following six topics:
Submitting a 100% Community-Driven Parallel Session (100CD)
Proposers have the freedom to choose the title and the research topic in the submission of their 100CD parallel session abstract. In the session description, the motivation for proposing the research topic and the reason the topic is relevant for this year should be provided in one or two sentences. We highly encourage the CD conveners to propose a session on the strong space weather events.
Open parallel session (OPS)
This year we will have an open parallel session, which will welcome submissions on research topics related to Space Weather and Space Climate but not covered by any other focused sessions. You can therefore only propose a team of conveners to lead this session. A single OPS session is intended for which one can only propose a team of conveners to lead the session. The team should be formed keeping diversity in mind. One of the PC members will join the team to offer support for this session.
Proposing an Application Pipeline (APL) Parallel Session
Session topics covering research, development and implementation of different application pipelines are welcomed as submissions for APL parallel session abstracts. Examples of possible (components of) pipelines include:
Information for session submission
For SWRs,100CD and APL session proposal submissions, the following information will be required:
For OPS session proposal submissions, the following information will be required:
After the session proposal deadline, the Programme Committee (PC) will review proposals and decide which are accepted. Session conveners will be notified in mid-April as to whether their proposal has been successful. A call for session abstracts (talks and posters) will be announced. Guidelines for conveners will be published. Later in the year, conveners will be asked to provide the names of chairs. At least one chair should be a convener. At least one chair will be attending in person, in Umea. At least one chair will take responsibility for monitoring online comments.