Poznań will host ICCA The Future of Healthcare Meetings on 6–8 September 2027. The international event dedicated to medical and healthcare meetings will be co-hosted by Poland Convention Bureau – Polish Tourism Organisation, Poznań Convention Bureau and Poznań Event Hub – Grupa MTP.
The event will bring healthcare association executives, medical meetings professionals, destinations, venues and other meeting suppliers to Poland to discuss how healthcare congresses need to change in response to new participant expectations, technology, regulation and the growing focus on the outcomes generated by scientific meetings.
For Poznań, securing the event adds another international association meeting to its forward calendar and follows the announcement of AC Forum 2028.
It also brings back to Poznań an organisation the city knows well. In 2025, Poznań hosted the ICCA Central European Chapter Meeting, organised jointly by Grupa MTP, the City of Poznań – Poznań Convention Bureau and Poland Convention Bureau. The meeting brought ICCA members from more than 20 countries to Poznań Congress Center.
What is ICCA The Future of Healthcare Meetings?
The Future of Healthcare Meetings is ICCA’s specialist meeting for the medical and healthcare association sector. Its participants include executives from international healthcare associations, ICCA members, convention bureaux, congress centres, professional congress organisers and other organisations involved in planning medical and scientific meetings.
Its origins are closely connected with the scale of the healthcare association market. When ICCA and AC Forum launched the first in-person edition in 2022, they estimated that healthcare and medical sciences accounted for approximately 37% of international association meetings at the time.
The event was initially developed jointly by ICCA and AC Forum, an organisation established by and for international associations. Rather than approaching medical congresses solely from the operational perspective, the programme examined issues specific to healthcare organisations: accreditation and compliance, the involvement of younger professionals, meeting formats, scientific education and the long-term effects of congresses on host communities.
The format has since developed into an annual ICCA meeting connecting association decision-makers directly with destinations and meetings industry suppliers.
ICCA itself was established in 1963 and today represents more than 1,100 members across almost 100 countries. Its work concentrates specifically on the international association meetings market.
From Cannes to Poznań: previous editions of The Future of Healthcare Meetings
The 2027 meeting in Poznań continues a series that has visited major European association and healthcare destinations.
| Year | Host destination | Dates | Selected themes and data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Cannes, France | 6–8 July | First in-person ICCA–AC Forum edition. Compliance, accreditation, post-pandemic meeting models, next-generation healthcare professionals and legacy. |
| 2023 | Istanbul, Türkiye | 6–8 June | Second edition. More than 130 delegates attended. The programme examined next-generation professionals, healthcare meeting accreditation and compliance, and how congresses can contribute to public health. |
| 2024 | Zurich, Switzerland | 2–4 September | Third edition. Hosted in one of Europe’s established medtech centres, with sessions covering stakeholder engagement, legacy, new generations of participants and the changing requirements of healthcare associations. |
| 2025 | Düsseldorf, Germany | 1–3 October | Fourth edition, attended by around 200 participants. Topics included the patient voice, digitalisation, financial sustainability of healthcare meetings and new approaches to meeting design. |
| 2026 | Athens, Greece | 20–22 September | The programme focused on patient-centred meeting design, digital integration, compliance, sustainability, innovative scientific formats and measuring the results generated by medical meetings. |
| 2027 | Poznań, Poland | 6–8 September | The next chapter of the series, co-hosted by Poland Convention Bureau, Poznań Convention Bureau and Poznań Event Hub – Grupa MTP. |
The development of the programme is visible in its subject matter. Early editions concentrated heavily on the post-pandemic rebuilding of healthcare congresses, accreditation and compliance. Later meetings added patient participation, digitalisation, financial models, sustainability, meeting design and the question of what remains in a destination after delegates leave.
The 2026 Athens programme, held immediately before the Poznań announcement, addressed hybrid and digital participation, sustainable event design, compliance, measurable results and patient-centred approaches to scientific exchange.
How large could the Poznań meeting be?
The final number of participants for 2027 has not yet been announced, but ICCA’s host requirements provide a useful indication of the planned scale.
For the 2026–2027 bidding cycle, ICCA required prospective host destinations to provide space for at least 250 on-site participants. The host programme is designed to attract more than 30 executives representing medical and scientific associations, while the event is promoted to almost 1,000 association executives within the ICCA Association Community. Attendance itself is not formally capped, although individual workshops may have limits to preserve their interactive format.
The educational programme normally runs for approximately two and a half days, alongside destination orientation, networking functions and opportunities for association executives to experience the host city and its meetings infrastructure.
This makes the event particularly relevant from a destination-development perspective. The participants include people involved directly in selecting future congress destinations as well as professionals responsible for delivering international medical meetings.
Poznań strengthens its position in the association meetings market
The announcement comes as Poznań records stronger results in the international association segment.
According to the ICCA Country & City Rankings 2025, Poznań hosted 19 international meetings meeting ICCA criteria, nine more than in the previous year. The result placed Poznań joint 141st globally, alongside Wrocław among Polish cities. Poland as a whole recorded 215 qualifying association meetings in 2025, ranking 18th worldwide and 11th in Europe.
That progress is relevant to the Future of Healthcare Meetings because ICCA events themselves can form part of a longer destination-development process. Hosting the ICCA Central European Chapter Meeting in 2025 gave international meetings professionals an opportunity to see Poznań’s congress infrastructure directly.
One of the principal venues in the city, Poznań Congress Center, offers more than 4,000 conference seats and 38 fully equipped meeting rooms. Its Sala Ziemi can accommodate up to 1,940 participants in theatre layout, while the wider Poznań International Fair complex allows substantially larger event formats.
The 2027 venue has not been specified in this announcement, but the scale of the city’s existing infrastructure exceeds the minimum requirements set out by ICCA for The Future of Healthcare Meetings.
Healthcare meetings: from congress delivery to patient outcomes
The central question behind the ICCA programme is broader than how to organise another medical congress.
Medical and scientific associations use meetings to disseminate research, provide professional education, develop clinical practice, connect researchers and practitioners and maintain their international communities. ICCA’s recent programmes have consequently looked at how event design can support those objectives rather than treating attendance figures as the only measure of success.
In Düsseldorf in 2025, for example, discussions included integrating the patient voice into congress programmes, the financial sustainability of association meetings, digital health and the future role of meetings in medicine.
Athens in 2026 developed the discussion further, including new approaches to scientific poster sessions, digital integration, sustainability, compliance and ways of measuring the results generated by healthcare meetings.
These subjects are likely to remain relevant as preparations begin for Poznań 2027.
Poland welcomes the international healthcare meetings community in 2027
The 2027 edition will be prepared jointly by:
- Poland Convention Bureau – Polish Tourism Organisation
- Poznań Convention Bureau
- Poznań Event Hub – Grupa MTP
For Poland Convention Bureau, the event creates an opportunity to present Poland directly to international healthcare association executives and meetings professionals responsible for congress development and destination selection.
For Poznań, it continues a sequence of international association activity that already includes the ICCA Central European Chapter Meeting 2025 and the forthcoming AC Forum 2028.
On 6–8 September 2027, the focus will move specifically to healthcare meetings – and to the question that has accompanied the ICCA initiative since its first edition: how can international medical congresses improve the exchange of knowledge and contribute, ultimately, to better patient outcomes?
See you in Poznań in 2027.
Read also
- ICCA Central European Chapter Meeting 2025 in Poznań – international meetings industry gathers in Poland
- Poland advances in the ICCA 2025 ranking – 215 international association meetings
- Poznań in the meetings industry – growth and business events data
- Destination Poland Green Academy in Poznań – including data from ICCA CEC 2025
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