PopGroup 59 - 7-9 January 2026 - Lille

This year’s meeting will be a joint PopGroup-ALPHY meeting!

We’re looking forward to seeing you on the 7th of January!

Our full programme (talks and posters) can be found here.

Follow us on BlueSky for updates!


	The Population Genetics Group (or PopGroup) is a conference centered on population and evolutionary genetics and has existed since 1968. It has become an international event, an unmissable rendez-vous for many scientists. Maintaining its standing as both inspiring and collegiate, PopGroup is often the first conference at which many postgraduate students present their work. Having mostly been held in the UK, there have been only two exceptions, the 1991 event held in Leiden and this year, where it will once again be held on mainland Europe, in Lille.

The Population Genetics Group (or PopGroup) is a conference centered on population and evolutionary genetics and has existed since 1968. It has become an international event, an unmissable rendez-vous for many scientists. Maintaining its standing as both inspiring and collegiate, PopGroup is often the first conference at which many postgraduate students present their work. Having mostly been held in the UK, there have been only two exceptions, the 1991 event held in Leiden and this year, where it will once again be held on mainland Europe, in Lille.


	ALPHY is an annual meeting dedicated to the field of Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Genomics (ALPHY = ALignments and PHYlogeny). The main goal of this meeting is to promote informal exchanges in this highly multidisciplinary field, and to encourage young scientists to present their work. ALPHY is a working group of the GDR BiMM (whose aim is to structure and lead the French bioinformatics research community).

ALPHY is an annual meeting dedicated to the field of Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Genomics (ALPHY = ALignments and PHYlogeny). The main goal of this meeting is to promote informal exchanges in this highly multidisciplinary field, and to encourage young scientists to present their work. ALPHY is a working group of the GDR BiMM (whose aim is to structure and lead the French bioinformatics research community).

Registration

Registration is now closed.

Registration fees* (in Euros)

-	Regular fees	with Gala	Genetics Society members	with Gala
Students	60.50	115.50	49.50	104.50
Senior scientists	110.00	165.00	99.00	154.00

*Registration includes lunch, coffee breaks and cocktails, but not dinner.

Programme

This year’s PopGroup will start early afternoon on the 7th of January and end in the evening of the 9th of January, followed by the gala dinner.

Scientific programme

Talks and Posters

The full programme (updated 5th of January), with speakers and posters (as well as abstracts) can be found here! You can download the PDF as of now and we will update it in case of any changes.

There will be four parallel sessions for talks and two poster sessions, on the evenings of the 7th and 8th of January.

Location

Lilliad The conference will be hosted on the campus of the University of Lille, just 10 minutes away from the city center by metro.

The venue

All talk sessions, poster sessions and coffee breaks will take place at the LILLIAD, the University of Lille’s Learning Innovation Center that is on the Science Campus:

Travel and accommodation

Lille is a central European city. There are many hotels and opportunities for accommodation. Getting here is quite easy, especially by train.

Accommodation

For ethical reasons, we recommend avoiding booking through AirBnB and Booking.com. Some possible alternatives to find and book accommodation are:

The official site of the Tourist Office

Gites de France

Travel

By train

There are two train stations in Lille (literally a 5 minute walk from each other): Lille Europe and Lille Flandres. From the UK, the Eurostar has direct trains to Lille Europe. Sometimes snap tickets are available … check them out!

Contact

We’re still seting things up - but if you need any information the organising comittee can be reached here

You can also follow us un BlueSky for updates. Our handle is @popgroup2026@bsky.social

This year’s organising committee (in alphabetical order)

Diala Abu Awad (Université de Paris-Saclay), Vincent Castric (Université de Lille), Thomas Lesaffre (Université de Lausanne), Camille Roux (Université de Lille), Roman Stetsenko (University of Edinburgh)