PopGroup 59 - 7-9 January 2026 - Lille

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

Registration will be opening 8th of October and ending 11th of November 2025

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 will be open from 8th of October to 10th of November. We will be including a link here for pre-registration, including abstract submission. Once pre-registration is complete, you will receive an email with the link to the website where you will be able to complete registration. This year the number of participants is capped at 285. Registration is on a first come, first served basis!

Members of the Genetics Society receive a discount. If you are not yet a society member, all details and advantages of joining can be found here

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

Once we have the full programme, we will provide it in this section.

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

Plenary speakers

There will be three plenary sessions.

Our invited speakers are (in alphabetical order):

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)