When the EACR ran its first virtual conferences in 2020, it was a decision made to address the quickly evolving Covid-19 crisis. International travel was near impossible, so we moved online, and the general assumption was that this was a temporary compromise: useful in a crisis, but a lesser version of the real thing.
Six years and more than 35 virtual conferences later (including two virtual EACR Annual Congresses in 2020 and 2021), we went back through feedback from more than 4,500 attendees, across conferences on topics from signalling circuits or immunotherapy to early-career masterclasses. The picture that emerges doesn’t look like a compromise.
The headline number
99% of respondents said they would recommend EACR virtual conferences
Across every conference in the dataset, 99% of respondents said they would recommend EACR virtual conferences to others, and that figure barely moves from year to year. Whatever else has changed about these events (the topics, the platforms, the speakers), attendee satisfaction remains stable and high. That consistency indicates that virtual conferences aren’t just riding pandemic-era goodwill. If that were the case, satisfaction would likely have eased off as in-person options came back and that hasn’t happened. We clearly see that attendees are now choosing virtual on its own merits.
No compromising needed
Great science: The most common worries about virtual events are that something gets lost and that the science feels different without a room to stand in. The feedback we have received indicates that this is not the case. Across years and topics, the same three things come up again and again: the calibre of speakers, the quality of the science, and how well the events are run. On average 94% of respondents rated the scientific content as excellent or very good.
A 2026 attendee put it simply:
“The virtual conference was excellent – this was my first time participating in such an event, and it exceeded my expectations. The organizers allocated enough time for discussions, providing great opportunities to ask questions directly to speakers. All presentations were highly interesting and informative.”
Networking: Some scientists believe that virtual formats leave no room for real discussion; our data tells another story. 99% of respondents said the scientific programme allowed adequate time for discussion and questions, reinforcing that both the science and the conversations created by it aren’t inhibited by virtual formats.
Many people don’t realise EACR virtual conferences also accept abstract submissions and include proffered papers and flash talks, or full poster discussion sessions, allowing live feedback of attendees’ research from the community.
Organisation: Feedback suggests that the high standard of organisation associated with EACR events is just as evident in the virtual format. A recent attendee wrote: “The moderators kept the entire program on schedule (by the clock)… Kudos to the moderators!!”. Another, years earlier at a different event, made the same point: “This was a well organized meeting. It ran on time and was well moderated, always a big plus!!” The same praise is independently offered, across conferences years apart.
Accessibility matters
One of the strongest themes in six years of feedback isn’t about matching the in-person experience; it’s about who gets to show up at all. Between 2023 and 2025 we asked directly – If this had been an in-person event, would you still have attended? Of the 450 attendees who answered, roughly 41% said a clear yes, but 34% said a clear no (the rest were conditional, depending on cost, visa status, travel budget, or location). This told us that a substantial share of the researchers who found real value in these events, by their own account, would have been shut out if virtual formats were not options.
The reasons behind those “no” and “conditional” answers were more wide-ranging than we expected. Visa requirements came up repeatedly. So did currency and cost of living. Attendees writing from Turkey and Brazil pointed directly to exchange rates and the price of international travel. Others cited a lack of travel grant funding, or family and childcare responsibilities which made a multi-day trip abroad infeasible.
A postdoc who attended a 2023 virtual conference put it simply:
“As an early career research[er], I can attend maximum one to two on-site meetings [a year] in different cities/countries because of the cost of attendance. Attending online conferences allows me to follow world known experts’ seminars and their research.”
Affordability comes up again and again when analysing virtual conference feedback; cost and value are clearly front and centre in the minds of modern researchers. For EACR members, virtual conferences can be appreciably more economical at a starting rate of €40 for an event like the Career Masterclass for Early Career Cancer Researchers.
For attendees outside of Western Europe, the effect is even more apparent. One respondent, based in India, wrote:
“This virtual conference enabled [international students like myself] to get up to date with what is happening in our research field [while also providing] the opportunity to present our work and get feedback. The networking and poster events through the Gather platform [see image below] were really fun and wonderful experience.”
Another attendee, writing from Turkey during a period of economic crisis, said:
“Please do not underestimate virtual events; personally, I am quite content. Participating in such a level of professionalism from the comfort of home is truly a luxury.”
Travel wasn’t the only accessibility factor participants reported. One postdoc wrote: “I am [on] maternity leave and this online experience was really meaningful to keep updated.” A senior-level scientist noted that virtual formats made it “much easier to join a short international meeting, especially as a parent, when travel is not an issue.” And another attendee shared that “as someone who can often be quite overwhelmed during conferences due to the noise, and the volume of people attending, the virtual event allowed me to be quite relaxed whilst still being able to engage in some truly fascinating research.”
None of those attendees saw virtual events as a compromise. Instead, they complimented a format that allowed them to attend comfortably and without their typical barriers.
Moving research forward
Recently (from 2025) we have started asking participants how EACR virtual conferences are impacting their research. On average, 93% of respondents said the conference they attended sparked ideas they planned to pursue, whether it was regarding plans already in progress, or ones they were beginning to consider.
The comments back this up with specifics: a postdoc described leaving a signalling conference with “a clearer network-level view of cancer signalling… concrete ideas to refine both my experimental design and translational questions.”
This is the part that’s easy to miss when the conversation about virtual events focuses on what is absent from the format. The data say the core function of a conference (new ideas, sharpened understanding, a reason to try something different in the lab) is happening at our virtual conferences. We asked attendees directly whether the EACR should keep running virtual conferences in the long term alongside our in-person events. Of the 3,100 who gave a clear answer, 81% said yes outright, another 17% said maybe, and less than 3% said no. A clear majority of attendees want virtual events to continue to fuel groundbreaking research knowledge exchange and conversations.
An entry point for early-career researchers
An average 63% of respondents were students or postdocs and, for a striking number, these virtual events were genuine firsts: first conference, first talk, first time presenting to an audience beyond their own lab.
When asked whether attending left them feeling more motivated or confident in their cancer research career, 89% of respondents said yes.
One attendee wrote:
“As a first-year Master’s student, this was my first experience attending a scientific conference, and it was fascinating to discover the many different approaches to immunotherapy”.
Another, giving their first flash talk, said:
“It was a great opportunity to talk about my work, but mostly to [gain experience] in front of a big audience, which I am not accustomed to.”
The annual EACR Career Masterclass for Early Career Researchers (previously the Early Career Researchers’ Conference), is a virtual conference that offers all of the benefits outlined above but, instead of focussing on the science, it offers equally crucial information, skills, and advice on career-related topics. This year’s edition will discuss grant writing, career paths from academia, publishing, industry and beyond, equality, inclusion and diversity, and the ethical use of AI.
This virtual conference and others like it (such as the 2024 EACR-EMBO Commercialising Your Research: What’s Involved? virtual event) nurture the next generation to become the eminent scientists of the future.
What’s next?
We know that, just like in-person conferences, the virtual format is not perfect, and we will continue to update and evolve based on attendee feedback to best serve the cancer research community. We are already implementing that feedback into future EACR virtual conferences, including more dedicated discussion sessions and small-group formats.
The broader conclusion from six years of data is hard to argue with – virtual conferences aren’t a workaround anymore. They are a permanent home for accessible, world-leading science and career development skills where a huge number of researchers, especially those earliest in their careers, are getting real, live exposure to a scientific community, forming the ideas that shape their next project, and deciding this is a field worth staying in.
We got into virtual conferences by necessity, but the data say we should keep doing them by choice.
Interest in our upcoming virtual EACR conferences?
We have curated an outstanding programme of events available in the coming months and into 2027. Head over to our conferences page now for more information, and register to secure your spot today.
