Key takeaways
- The easiest place all year to meet your market in person.
- Exhibitor and speaker lists are public ahead of time, so you can plan who to see before you travel.
- For building relationships and growing your network.
Life science runs on a predictable annual conference calendar. The same handful of shows come back every year, close to the same time, and who is exhibiting, presenting, or showing up is public long before the doors open. That makes a conference the easiest place all year to meet your market in person, as long as you plan who to see before you travel rather than treating it as a travel logistics problem.
How to read this calendar
Each show below lists a typical annual timing (the month or season it recurs in), the most recently confirmed dates and city where available, who actually attends, and the GTM angle: what that show is worth showing up for. For how to work the run-up to a show, see selling around life science conferences. A booth means a company committed real budget to being there months ahead, so it is a reliable read on who will be present. A speaking slot gives you a named person and a topic to open with. Someone saying they plan to attend is softer, but still tells you they are reachable that week. The window to plan opens once exhibitor and speaker lists go public, usually well before the show, not after it closes.
The calendar
Broad biotech, partnering, and investment
The shows most relevant for early business development conversations, licensing, and general account intelligence, across therapeutic areas and company stages.
- BIO International Convention
- Typically held in June. 2026: June 22–25, San Diego. The broadest life science show on the calendar: corporate development, licensing, partnering, and investor audiences from biotech and pharma, alongside the full services and supply ecosystem that sells into them. Both a booth and a scheduled partnering meeting are committed months ahead, so the exhibitor floor and the partnering roster tell you who will be in the room and worth setting up time with. Full GTM breakdown →
- JPMorgan Healthcare Conference & BIO Partnering @ JPM Week
- Typically held in mid-January, San Francisco. 2026: week of January 12. The main JPMorgan conference itself is invite-only for company leadership and large investors; the surrounding partnering week, including BIO's own event, is where most of the practical, visible company activity happens. Treat the week as the single densest burst of corporate updates, guidance, and deal news in the industry's calendar, a good trigger to refresh account intelligence across your whole book even for accounts you have no in-person presence at. Full GTM breakdown →
- BIO Investment & Growth Summit
- Typically held early in the year, Miami. 2027: February 16–17, Miami Beach. Public and late-stage private biotech CEOs presenting directly to an investor audience. A useful early read on which companies are actively courting investor attention this year, which often precedes a public funding-round signal by weeks to a few months. Full GTM breakdown →
- DIA Global Annual Meeting
- Typically held in June. 2026: June 14–18, Philadelphia. Regulatory affairs, clinical development, and drug safety professionals across pharma and biotech, plus the CROs and consultancies that serve them. A stronger fit for sellers targeting regulatory or clinical operations functions specifically than for a general business-development play. Full GTM breakdown →
Oncology
Oncology is the largest single therapeutic area on the life science conference calendar, with several distinct shows depending on how specialized your buyer's focus is.
- ASCO Annual Meeting
- Typically held in late May or early June. 2026: May 29–June 2, Chicago. The largest clinical oncology meeting in the US: oncologists, trial sponsors, and effectively every company running or supporting an oncology program. Exhibitor lists and accepted abstracts are both public well before the meeting, so you can plan who to meet across an oncology account list before you travel. Full GTM breakdown →
- AACR Annual Meeting
- Typically held in April. Cancer research and translational science, skewing earlier-stage and more academic-adjacent than ASCO. A better fit for research tools, reagents, and discovery-stage services than for vendors focused on late-stage clinical or commercial accounts. Full GTM breakdown →
- ASH Annual Meeting
- Typically held in December. 2026: December 12–15, New Orleans. Hematology and hematologic malignancies specifically. One of the last major shows of the calendar year, a useful checkpoint for closing out account activity before the January reset around JPM week. Full GTM breakdown →
- SITC Annual Meeting
- Typically held in November. Immuno-oncology specifically: a narrower and more specialized audience than ASCO. A sharper filter than a general oncology show for accounts with an active immunotherapy program. Full GTM breakdown →
- ESMO Congress
- Typically held in September or October. 2026: October 23–27, Madrid. The European counterpart to ASCO, with heavy attendance from US-headquartered oncology companies alongside European ones. Worth tracking even as a European venue, since many US biotechs use it for the same partnering and visibility purposes as a domestic show. Full GTM breakdown →
Cell and gene therapy, biologics
- ASGCT Annual Meeting
- Typically held in May. Cell and gene therapy developers, and the manufacturing and analytical vendors that serve them. A strong show specifically for CDMOs and tools vendors with cell and gene therapy capability, a weaker fit for anyone outside that modality. Full GTM breakdown →
- PEGS Boston
- Typically held in April or May, Boston. Biologics and antibody discovery and engineering teams. A discovery-stage audience, useful earlier in a program's life than the commercial-manufacturing-focused shows below. Full GTM breakdown →
- Biotech Week Boston
- Typically held in September, Boston. A large umbrella week covering bioprocessing and cell and gene therapy manufacturing and commercialization, with several co-located tracks running the same week. One of the densest weeks on the calendar for manufacturing and CDMO-relevant conversations, given how much co-located activity runs in parallel. Full GTM breakdown →
- BPI West
- Typically held in March, San Diego. The West Coast counterpart to the Boston bioprocessing shows. Useful for reaching West Coast biotech manufacturing teams without the travel cost of the Boston week. Full GTM breakdown →
- Phacilitate Advanced Therapies Week
- Typically held in February. Cell and gene therapy manufacturing and commercialization specifically. An earlier-in-the-year read on close to the same audience Biotech Week Boston reaches in the fall. Full GTM breakdown →
Manufacturing, CDMO, and supply chain
- DCAT Week
- Typically held in March, New York City. Pharmaceutical manufacturing, sourcing, and supply chain: closer to the CDMO industry's own home-turf event than a general biotech show. Structured more around pre-scheduled one-on-one meetings than a public show floor, so the useful signal is which companies show up at all, not booth size. Full GTM breakdown →
- CPHI (Americas and worldwide editions)
- Timing varies by edition; the Americas edition relocates to Miami for 2027. 2027: May 25–26, Miami Beach. Pharmaceutical ingredient, formulation, and manufacturing sourcing. A sourcing- and procurement-heavy audience, useful for CDMOs and manufacturing-adjacent tools vendors specifically. Full GTM breakdown →
- ISPE Annual Meeting & Expo
- Typically held in October. Pharmaceutical engineering, facilities, and manufacturing operations. Skews toward facilities and engineering roles rather than commercial or business-development contacts. Full GTM breakdown →
- INTERPHEX
- Typically held in April, New York City. Pharmaceutical and biotech manufacturing, processing, and packaging technology. A broader manufacturing-technology audience than the more CDMO-specific shows above. Full GTM breakdown →
Clinical operations and regulatory
- SCOPE Summit
- Typically held in February, Orlando. Clinical operations executives specifically, one of the few shows built around that buyer rather than a broader R&D audience. Arguably the single best-targeted show on this list for a CRO selling into clinical operations leadership. Full GTM breakdown →
- IDWeek
- Typically held in October. Infectious disease research and clinical practice. Relevant mainly for accounts with an infectious disease or vaccine program.
Genomics, immunology, and specialty science
- ASHG Annual Meeting
- Typically held in October or November. Human genetics research. A strong fit for genomics tools and sequencing-adjacent vendors. Full GTM breakdown →
- AAI / IMMUNOLOGY
- Typically held in May. Immunology research broadly, beyond immuno-oncology specifically. Useful for reagent, assay, and instrument vendors serving immunology labs.
- SOT Annual Meeting & ToxExpo
- Typically held in March. Toxicology, much of it preclinical safety work ahead of an IND filing. A leading indicator for accounts approaching their first IND; useful to combine with a clinical-trial-registration signal that tends to follow a few months later. Full GTM breakdown →
- AMP Annual Meeting
- Typically held in November. Molecular pathology, weighted toward diagnostics. Relevant mainly for vendors selling into diagnostics and precision-medicine workflows.
Medtech
- The MedTech Conference (AdvaMed)
- Typically held in October. 2026: October 18–21, Boston. Medical device and diagnostics companies specifically, a distinct buyer population from therapeutics-focused biotech. The right show to track if your ICP includes device or diagnostics companies rather than pure therapeutics. Full GTM breakdown →
Beyond the flagship shows
This list covers the shows that come up most often across CROs, CDMOs, and life science tools and services sellers, but it is not exhaustive. There is a long tail of narrower regional and disease-specific conferences, organized by modality, therapeutic area, or function, that can matter more for a specific ICP than a broad flagship show. The right starting point is usually to confirm which of the shows above overlap with your actual therapeutic focus and buyer function first, then layer in narrower shows once those are being tracked reliably.
Building a pre-show target list
Pull the exhibitor and speaker lists for a show once they go public, cross-reference them against your account list and fit criteria, and put your time into the good-fit companies and contacts who will actually be there. See how to prioritize accounts for how that fit check should work, and which other signals to watch the rest of the year. For the vocabulary used across this calendar and the rest of the hub, see the GTM signals glossary.