Wednesday
20October
- Registration opens
- Pre-congress workshops
- ISODP Council meeting
The scientific programme
Knowledge shared.
Practice strengthened.
Plenaries, practical discussion and research for donation professionals at every stage. The programme below is an early outline: sessions, times and speakers will be confirmed over the coming months. The Scientific Programme Committee is co-led by Matthew Weiss (Canada) and Dale Gardiner (United Kingdom). Keynote speakers to be announced.
20–23 October 2027
Your week in London.
Thursday
21October
- Opening plenary
- Honouring Donor Families
- Parallel and abstract sessions
- Industry symposium
- 007 gala dinner at Guildhall
Friday
22October
- Plenaries
- Parallel and abstract sessions
- Poster judging
- Industry symposium
- Networking event
Saturday
23October
- Plenary
- Journal Watch and Best Abstract Showcase
- Abstract sessions
- ISODP Business Meeting
- Closing plenary
Draft timetable Subject to change
Draft as at October 2026. All times and titles are provisional.
Session formats
- Plenaries
- Concurrent sessions
- Oral abstract sessions
- Mini-orals
- Moderated posters
- Pre-congress workshops
Themes you can expect
- Training and education
- Donation system organisation
- Organ utilisation
- DCD
- Consent and the family approach
- Living donation
- Culture and religion
- Machine perfusion and NRP
- AI and data
- Ethics and death determination
Based on the most-submitted topics at Kyoto 2025.
Pre-congress workshops are booked separately. Gala dinner at Guildhall: Thursday 21 October 2027, tickets booked as an add-on to registration.
Shared perspectives
The plenary programme.
90 minutes
Opening Plenary
Welcome from the ISODP President, a donor family’s perspective, global donation data, and a recipient’s thanks to donors and their families.
75 minutes
Factoring in the Humans
How people make decisions about donation: behavioural science, and communicating with families and the public.
75 minutes
International Guidelines: What Are They Good For?
Do international guidelines and consensus statements — the World Brain Death Project, the Santander Global Summit and the Bucharest consensus — actually change practice?
75 minutes
Toward a Universal Definition of Human Death
Philosophical, scientific and political perspectives on whether one worldwide definition is possible.
75 minutes
Making Donation a Societal Priority
Engaging governments, evidencing value, and building and maintaining public trust, including countering misinformation.
75 minutes
At All Cost (Closing Plenary)
Donation and transplantation under extreme pressure: conflict, disaster and pandemic, including experience from Ukraine.
Explore the detail
Parallel sessions.
All parallel sessions are 90 minutes. Filter by the stage of donation system most relevant to you.
12 sessions
Donation systems
Donor Detection: Bringing Magnets to Haystacks
Donation systems
The Role of Donation Professionals in the ICU
Consent
The Family Approach Around the World (role-play workshop)
Family care
Family Follow-Up and Feedback Loops
End of life and ethics
End-of-Life Care, Donor Support and Public Trust
DBD
DBD Donor Management: State of the Evidence
Donor characterisation
Donor Characterisation: Mind the Gap
Technology
NRP and the Brain-Based Permanence Rule
Technology
Practical NRP Implementation and Ex-situ Perfusion
Ethics and legal
The Law and the Determination of Neurological Death
Research
Research-Exclusive Donors and Complex Consent
Paediatrics
Paediatric Donation: International Differences
Evidence from our community
Abstract sessions.
DCD: Predicting Time to Death and Asystole
Tissue Donation
Living Donation
Opens with an invited talk on how living and deceased donation interact.
Organ Assessment and Utilisation
Including allocation and extended criteria donors.
Training, Education and Professional Development
The most-submitted abstract topic at Kyoto 2025.
Journal Watch and Best Abstract Showcase
Journal editors review the year’s key papers, then the top-scored abstracts compete for the Best Abstract Prize, the congress’s highest prize.
Two further sessions will be themed after abstract review. A moderated poster exhibition will take place in the exhibition hall.
Let’s talk about London 2027.
Our organising team can help with your congress plans.
