The 26th SCCS will take place between Tuesday, 30 March to Thursday, 1 April 2027 at the University of Cambridge, UK.

We welcome applications from postgraduate students and early-career researchers working in university departments, conservation organisations and resource management agencies worldwide.

Presentations must focus on conservation, but may arise from a broad range of disciplines including ecology, genetics, geography, economics, social sciences and psychology.

What’s on?

The three-day event consists of four plenary talks from leading practitioners and academics, around 30 short talks from delegates and around 70 posters. Prizes are awarded for outstanding talks and posters.

We offer a dynamic programme of workshops to help delegates hone or learn new skills. Evening social events provide opportunities for networking and making friends.

Application rounds

Round 1 opens on Monday, 13 July and closes on Friday, 4 September 2026 at 23:59 (BST).

During this round, applications can be made to present a talk, a poster, or to attend without a presentation. Bursaries can also be applied for.

Round 2 opens on 14 December 2026 and closes on 15 January 2027.

During this round, applications can be made for a limited number of attendance-only places. It is not possible to apply to give a presentation, nor for a bursary in this round. Due to the limited number of places, we strongly advise applying in Round 1 for all those able to do so.

Online attendance

For those unable to attend the conference in person, we offer live-streaming of all the talks via Zoom. Online attendees also have the opportunity to submit questions to our speakers. 

Please note: online attendees cannot present their own work (talk or poster) via Zoom; nor can they join the workshops or evening events. Unfortunately, we cannot provide certificates for online attendance.

Plenary speakers at SCCS 2027

We are delighted to announce that our plenary speakers will be:

Conference costs

The in-person conference fee is £125.

For those who cannot attend in-person, we will be offering free live-streaming of all the talks.

Accommodation

Accommodation at St Catharine’s College has been reserved for delegates. Those offered a place at the conference will be able to book a room through SCCS.

Further details, including costs, will be sent to successful applicants.

Bursaries

There are a limited number of bursaries for which students can apply (in Round 1 only) to cover the cost of visas, travel, accommodation, meals and conference fees.

The global bursary scheme is for anyone who is not from a high-income country, regardless of where they are currently based. These bursaries are highly competitive and awarded to applicants offering a high-quality talk or poster.

The UK bursary scheme aims to improve diversity and inclusion in environmental sciences and support postgraduate students or early career researchers from under-represented groups in the UK.

SCCS 2026 took place between 31 March – 2 April 2026. Thank you to everyone who took part – in person and online! We welcomed 155 delegates in person to Cambridge and over 400 were registered to join us online.

Over the three days, there were 4 fantastic plenary talks, 32 talks from delegates and 83 posters.

We had 23 conservation organisations as exhibitors at the Who’s Who in Conservation Science and we ran 16 workshops for delegates on topics such as funding and grant-applications, ethics, scientific publishing, statistics and economics, as well as survey and programme design, diversity and inclusion, social media and impact.

The talks covered everything from seaweed farming to the deaths of Nepal’s rhinos, from artificial intelligence for snow leopards to rethinking tourism growth in the Galápagos.

The posters included projects on tiger recovery in India, coypu monitoring in Lombardy and the competition between water voles and brown rats in urban Cambridge.

The conference exists so that the next generation of conservation scientists can meet and exchange ideas with their peers, and get feedback on their research from leading conservation professionals.

Want to know more? See the report on the University of Cambridge website.