Conference Overview

Join us for the Third Asian Ornithological Conference (AOC 2026) taking place
between 14-17 November 2026 in Singapore.

Nested in the heart of tropical Southeast Asia, one of the most biodiversity-rich regions in the world, Singapore’s strategic location offers the ideal setting to convene and engage in scientific discourse while exploring the amazing local birdlife.

Hosted at the National University of Singapore, the AOC 2026 brings together ornithological experts across the world to facilitate knowledge sharing and productive regional collaborations on Asian ornithology. This conference will feature a breadth of exciting plenary talks and presentations from across all disciplines of ornithology, with some of the focal topics being ecology, genomics and speciation, conservation management, the Asian songbird crisis and the illegal Asian bird trade, migration along the East Asian–Australasian Flyway, avian biogeography across Asia and much, much more.

Don’t miss the opportunity to participate and witness the latest developments in Asian avian research!

History

The International Ornithologists’ Union (IOU), established in 1884, is a global organisation aimed at supporting scientific research in ornithology, promoting collaborations among different institutions and aiding in the translation of avian research into conservation. In order to do this, the IOU organises the International Ornithological Congress (IOC) every four years and facilitates the formation of regional groups, which in turn run their own regional conferences. To this end, the IOU created the Working Group on Asian Ornithology (WGAO), which – over time – developed into a more independent body, the Asian Ornithological Alliance (AOA). The AOA successfully staged the first Asian Ornithological Conference (AOC) in 2021. As this was during the height of COVID-19, the conference was held in a hybrid format, with most international participants attending online.

The second Asian Ornithological Conference was held in November 2024 in Beijing and constituted the first fully in-person AOC gathering. Co-organised by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the conference was attended by roughly 600 participants from over 25 countries, including prominent keynote speakers from Japan, South Korea, Mongolia, China, Indonesia and the Netherlands. The four-day conference at the China National Convention Center featured plenary talks, seminar sessions focused on a variety of sub-topics (avian migration, avian ecology, etc) and poster sessions. Following the success in Beijing, the third AOC will be held in Singapore in 2026, where we look forward to another stimulating conference.