Announcing the 2026 SIOP Annual Conference

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The 2026 SIOP Annual Conference will take place in New Orleans, LA. The conference schedule will be similar to this year’s conference with an opening plenary and reception, with the top posters on the evening of Wednesday, April 29. There will be 3 full days of sessions from Thursday, April 30, through Saturday, May 2, with a closing reception late Saturday afternoon. The conference will take place at the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, close to the Mississippi River. The main conference hotel is the Hilton New Orleans Riverside, about a 7-minute walk outdoors to the convention center or 10–15 minutes indoors through the Riverwalk Outlets shopping area. In addition to enjoying a jam-packed program of I-O content each day of the SIOP Annual Conference, there will be a range of engaging activities such as book discussions and a talent show. Attendees can also enjoy New Orleans during the midday breaks and evenings. New Orleans is a historic city with museums, great restaurants, and a number of evening historic walking tours.

In July, the SIOP Conference Committee toured the meeting facilities at the convention center and additional space at the Hilton for receptions. The facilities looked outstanding, and the weather will be much warmer than in Denver this April. All of the daytime sessions will take place in the convention center. This means that once attendees are in the convention center, they will not have to travel to other buildings to attend sessions. The convention center has a large exhibit hall and plenty of spaces for SIOP attendees to meet. The session rooms, all of which will be renovated before the conference takes place, are located on the floor above the exhibit hall and are in two general areas (one reached through an enclosed overhead walkway).

The SIOP Program Committee actually began planning for the 2026 SIOP Annual Conference while sessions were taking place at the Denver conference. We finalized the 2026 SIOP Annual Conference Call for Proposals (CFP), which has been posted on SIOP’s website (https://www.siop.org/events/the-annual-conference/program/call-for-proposals/). SIOP members are invited to submit proposals for sessions (i.e., debates, IGNITE! sessions, master tutorials, panel discussions, posters, symposia, and alternative sessions) before the deadline at 5 p.m. Eastern time, October 8, 2025. Although the CFP is very similar to last year’s conference, members are encouraged to review it when developing their proposals. One major change is the updated content areas, which have been condensed from 31 to 14. No previous topics have been removed. However, many topics were merged into broader, modernized content areas. This shorter list will help in programming the room and time-slot grid of sessions and make it easier to find sessions you would like to attend. The Program Committee is also working to create a balanced program of content areas and session types. The shorter list of content areas will help with this process.

We have a few tips for those submitting a proposal. When brainstorming ideas for proposals, members are encouraged to use past programs (https://archive.org/details/SIOPConfPrograms), the SIOP Member Directory, and social media (e.g., LinkedIn) for coming up with ideas and potential collaborators. It is also helpful to review the CFP, paying special attention to formatting requirements and eligibility rules (e.g., the rule of three). We have more 50-minute time slots than 80-minute time slots, so if you want to give your session a little extra chance of being accepted, try for 50 minutes instead of 80. You will also avoid a lot of undue stress if you do not wait until the last minute to prepare and submit your proposal.

Each submission will be reviewed by at least two peer reviewers who provide numerical ratings and narrative comments. Only the numerical ratings are used to determine acceptances, and the narratives are meant solely to provide feedback to submitters. Acceptance notifications are scheduled to be sent in December or early January. We strongly encourage all SIOP members to serve as peer reviewers. That will reduce the number of submissions each peer reviewer is assigned.

Most sessions at the SIOP annual conferences are peer reviewed. However, the Program Committee is organizing, or facilitating, a small number of invited sessions. The Special Sessions Subcommittee (led by Liana Kreamer) selects and organizes five sessions. These sessions are intended to have a broad interest among attendees, involve external speakers, or use a novel session format. The 2025 Special Sessions covered topics such as CULT-ure: The Similarities Between Cults and Organizations, Understanding Silent Vacationing and Its Impacts on Organizations, and Marketing I-O Psychology. There are also six sessions for the Executive Board’s use, which can include SIOP committee-sponsored sessions, and four sessions organized by the Alliance for Organizational Psychology. In addition, the Communities of Interest (COI) Subcommittee (led by Michelle Martin Raugh) is organizing 12 COIs, which consist of semi-structured opportunities for attendees interested in a particular topic to meet. The Competitions and Awards Subcommittee (led by Mariel Reynolds) is making plans for the 2026 SIOP Machine Learning Competition and the Student Consulting Challenge. More details on these competitions will be available in the coming months. This subcommittee also facilitates six sessions featuring winners of the 2025 SIOP Awards. These sessions are a great way to learn about award-winning research in I-O psychology and to hear about the work of prominent SIOP members.

Over the coming months, the work of the Program and Conference Committees will ramp up. Submissions will be sent out for review. Those accepted will be scheduled and assigned to rooms. The opening plenary, welcome and closing receptions, and other engaging events will be planned. And, behind the scenes, SIOP staff will be working to ensure that registration for the conference, workshops, consortia, and Friday Seminars proceeds seamlessly. In short, we’ll all be doing everything we can to make the 2026 SIOP Annual Conference the best ever!