Veterinary conferences 2027.

Still ahead in 2026

Thirty six meetings are left on the 2026 calendar, and the density is extreme: twenty one of them fall in the five weeks from 14 September to 14 October. If you need hours before a 31 December renewal, this is the list that matters, and the December meetings are the last realistic chance.

Everything remaining on the 2026 US calendar, in date order. The CE column is the maximum one attendee can claim, which is usually far below the number on the conference's own marketing.

What’s the maximum number of CE hours I can claim?

Organisers publish two figures: the size of the whole programme, and the cap on what one attendee can claim. They can differ by a factor of twenty, and it is the second that decides whether a meeting closes your renewal gap.

Both figures, as published by each organiser. RACE status is quoted as the organiser states it, because it varies and several meetings are not RACE approved at all.

The biggest veterinary conferences

Measured by attendance. These are the largest meetings on the calendar, and what each one is actually like.

Already run in 2026

Kept here so the year reads as one calendar, and because most of these hold roughly the same slot each year. If a meeting you want is missing from the 2027 table above, this is the best guide to when it will land.

What a conference actually costs

Registration is rarely the biggest number, and the pricing structures differ more than people expect. Here is how the real spend breaks down and where the savings hide.

• Registration. Published 2026 rates run from $99 for a student ticket at Wild West Vet to $1,070 for a non member veterinarian at IVECCS. Most large meetings sit between $250 and $600. Watch the structure: IVECCS and AAHA CON price by membership, while VMX, WVC, Fetch, Wild West Vet and SWVS price purely by role, so joining an association saves you nothing at those.
• Wet labs and masterclasses. Priced separately at nearly every meeting, and they sell out weeks before the general programme does. If labs are the reason you are going, book them the day registration opens.
• Travel and hotel. Usually the largest line for a national meeting. Conference hotel blocks are released in stages.

Where the cheap hours are

• Students go nearly free. WVC gives students and active military free registration. Wild West Vet holds students at $99, IVECCS at $120 early bird, SWVS at $75, and the North Carolina conference admits its own 2026 graduates free.
• State and regional meetings. Crossroads, Midwest, Pacific Northwest, New England and the state VMA conferences are consistently the lowest cost per claimable hour, and you sleep in your own bed more often.
• Virtual tickets, where they exist. IVECCS virtual starts around $270 for a technician, VMX Virtual carries the highest per person cap of any option at 51 hours, and the New York State conference includes 90 or more recordings with every registration type. But most meetings offer nothing remote at all, so check before you plan around it.
• Employer budgets. Most associate contracts carry a CE allowance and paid CE days. If yours does, the question is not whether to go but which meeting uses the allowance best.

Calls for papers and abstract deadlines

Abstract and proposal windows open roughly a year ahead of the meeting and close quietly, usually without a reminder. The list below is in deadline order, soonest first. Every date was retrieved from the organiser's own submission page in September 2026.

Open now, or with a 2027 date already published

Calls with a published deadline, soonest first. "Opens" is given where the organiser has announced a window but not yet opened it.

Where an organiser has published a month but not a day, the month is given as it stands.

Ran in 2026, not yet reopened for 2027

These organisers all run open calls, but none has published a 2027 deadline yet. The 2026 dates are given only as a guide to when the window is likely to fall, and should not be relied on as this year's deadline. Check the organiser from about February.

Prior year deadlines, given as a planning guide only. None of these is a live 2027 date.

Meetings that run no open call

Several of the largest meetings on this page build their programme by invitation, and submitting an abstract to them is not possible because there is nothing to submit to.

• WVC runs no call for papers. Viticus Group takes speaker interest through a standing form with no deadline, and says outright that submitting it does not guarantee a speaking opportunity. Topics are chosen by its education team.
• ABVP runs no call. The symposium is invited throughout, with the 2027 programme due out in November 2026.
• The AAEP Resort Symposium runs no call, unlike the AAEP Annual Convention above. It is an invited faculty programme.
• AAVPT and ACVCP publish no call for abstracts. AAVPT invites its speakers directly. The only open element is a student poster session, for which no 2027 deadline has been posted.
• VHMA accepts proposals continuously, with no deadline, through its Education and Program Advisory Panel, covering conferences, regional events and webinars. Its one firm rule is that content must not be aimed primarily at a clinical audience.
• VMX and Fetch publish no open abstract process. Both build their faculty by invitation. Fetch has moved to the dvm360 Events site and lists past faculty in place of any call.
• AAHA CON, Uncharted and VetPartners publish no call either. VetPartners is the most explicit of the three: its speaker portal opens by welcoming you as an invited speaker, and the only dates on it are material deadlines for people already booked. Uncharted had already named its 2027 speakers when this was checked.
• VETgirl collects speaker interest by email, with no deadline, for its CE programme generally and not for VETgirl U specifically. There is no form and no closing date.
• The two AVMA satellite meetings run no call, unlike the AVMA Convention itself. Neither the Veterinary Leadership Conference nor the Veterinary Business and Economic Forum has a submission route; both are programmed centrally. The AAVMC Deans' Leadership Conference is likewise absent from AAVMC's own call for abstracts.
• Southwest Veterinary Symposium takes proposals but sets no deadline. Its CE committee keeps submissions on file and contacts you only if interested, which makes it worth submitting early and not at any particular time of year.
• The Midwest Veterinary Conference runs a genuine competitive call for speakers, across its clinical, practice management, technician, shelter, equine and food animal tracks. It publishes no dates for it, and the 2027 round has already closed, so the mailing list is the only way to catch the next one.
• The North American Veterinary Dermatology Forum runs a real call but has not dated the 2027 one. It takes Free Communications in four categories, original research, clinical, resident and poster, and requires that the work has not been presented or published elsewhere first. Its site says it is calling for 2027 contributions, but every date on the page is written in the past tense and belongs to the previous cycle, which closed on Nov 1 and Dec 1, 2025. A third, older page still shows a 2021 deadline. None of those is this year's date, so ask the programme committee.
• FelineVMA, AVSAB and Exotic365 publish no open call. All three build invited programmes. FelineVMA is the one to watch out for, because the page whose address still contains "call for" is now simply the accepted programme, listing the talks that were chosen rather than inviting new ones.
• The university hosted meetings are invitation only, which surprises people. Neither the New York State Veterinary Conference at Cornell nor the UC Davis programme publishes any submission route; both are built by a planning committee, and UC Davis collects abstracts only after it has invited you.

How to choose a conference for CE credits

1. When does your licence renew?

Work backwards from the renewal date, not forwards from the calendar. A Texas licence renews annually on 17 hours; a New York licence runs on a three year cycle of 45.

2. Do you need labs or lectures?

If you want to come back doing something new with your hands, the meeting matters less than the lab list. WVC, the Veterinary Dental Forum, Wild West Vet and the Gulf-Atlantic all build their reputation on wet labs, or if you want breadth, VMX and AVMA give you more tracks than you can use.

3. Can you travel?

Genuine remote attendance is rarer than the marketing suggests. VMX, IVECCS, ACVIM Forum, the New York State conference and PacVet 2027 offer it properly. WVC, AAHA CON, Wild West Vet, SWVS, AASV and every in person Fetch explicitly do not. If you cannot leave the practice, that shortlist is your whole shortlist.

4. Who else should go?

Technicians and practice managers have their own tracks at SWVS, AAHA CON, IVECCS and most state meetings, and NAVC HiVE and the VHMA meetings are built for them.

5. Are you going for the CE or the people?

Both are legitimate. Specialty meetings such as ACVIM Forum, ACVS Surgery Summit, IVECCS, ACVO, ACVR and ACVP are where your specific corner of the profession is in one room. Larger meetings are a great way to catch up with friends and colleagues.

Going to a conference is easier when you are not taking medical records home.

Time out of the practice has to be made up somewhere, and records are usually where it lands. Four days away is four days of notes to write on top of the ones already waiting.

PawsFree is an AI scribe made only for veterinarians. Record the visit on your phone or in Chrome, and the finished note comes back written in your own style, with labs, imaging and history pulled in. On ezyVet, Vetspire and DogByte it inserts straight into the record. Everywhere else it hands you the note section by section to move across.

$100 per vet a month billed yearly, or $140 month to month. There is a 14 day free trial and it does not ask for a card.

About these dates

Every date on this page was checked in September 2026 against the organiser's own website. Where an organiser contradicted itself, we went with the page carrying the actual programme.

Confirm with the organiser before you book flights. If you spot something wrong here, tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

Last updated 14 September 2026.