Scientists skip key US meetings - and seize on smaller alternatives

"Attendance at several of the biggest science conferences held in the United States either fell this year compared with last year or is expected to fall in 2026. There are many reasons for the changes, but at least some researchers are curbing their travel to the United States because of policies put in place by the administration of US President Donald Trump. The obstacles have galvanized some meeting organizers to hatch alternative plans to bring the international research community together."

"Earlier this month, for instance, the artificial-intelligence (AI) conference NeurIPS hosted not only its main meeting in San Diego, California, but also its first-ever alternative location, in Mexico City, with the goal of alleviating travel challenges. Meanwhile, a group of AI researchers in Europe organized an independent spinoff conference, dubbed EurIPS, in Copenhagen. "Our main focus was on giving a home to people who felt intellectually homeless this year," says Søren Hauberg, a machine-learning and computer-vision researcher at the Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby who helped to organize EurIPS."

"In some cases, the observed decrease was slight, and the reasons were complex. For instance, attendance at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting last month was down 6%, from 22,359 people in 2024 to 21,093 this year. The number of countries those attendees represented also fell, from 88 in 2024 to 73 in 2025."

Attendance at multiple major U.S. science conferences declined in 2025 or is expected to fall in 2026. Various factors drove the changes, including policies from the Trump administration that led some researchers to avoid travel to the United States. Organizers created alternative events and locations to accommodate affected researchers, such as NeurIPS hosting a satellite meeting in Mexico City and European researchers staging a spinoff EurIPS in Copenhagen. Attendance at the Society for Neuroscience meeting dropped 6%, from 22,359 in 2024 to 21,093 in 2025, and represented countries declined from 88 to 73.

Read at Nature