Your outline abstract submission must be in plain English, clearly defining the objectives, status, methodology, findings and significance of the investigation or study. Your submitted outline abstract will be peer reviewed by international experts. Abstract selections are based on the scores and comments of those reviewers. Presenter decisions and author notification will be announced in December 2025.

Once the outline abstract is selected, at least one of the authors must register for the conference before the Early Bird Registration deadline (15 January 2026) in order to be included in the conference program

Your initial submission must be in the form of an outline abstract, using the template, as described above.

You may submit as many outline abstracts as you want. However, no individual can present more than two oral/poster presentations – the co-authors can present any further accepted submissions.

Three fundamental questions determine whether an abstract will be accepted onto the conference program: Is the work novel? Is it correct and well presented? Is it interesting? To improve your chance of success, consider the following criteria.

• Ensure that your abstract fits the selected conference topic and is relevant for experts and non-experts.
• Submit original content. Describe breakthrough technology, new concepts, and novel applications of established concepts, or improvements to existing theories (with new supporting data).
• Ensure that the work is well developed. If you can show concrete results that are well supported by data, your paper is more likely to be accepted.
• Clearly show how significant your work is. Your research must be relevant for your country, region or for other researchers and/or professionals working in your field.
• Prepare your outline with care, organize your material well, write clearly in plain English, prepare your graphics professionally, and make sure your information is accurate, up to date, and referenced.

Conference participants will receive a full digital proceeding with the final program. The abstract accepted for the conference can be updated before published in the conference proceeding.

Based on the extended abstracts’ merit, the Water Safety Conference’s Scientific and Programme Committees will recommend a list of authors to be contacted by IWA Publishing for full paper submission and peer review.

Please note that acceptance of a paper for conference presentation does not guarantee subsequent acceptance for journal publication, the final decision on journal publication lies with the journals’ Editor-in-Chief.

If you do not wish your paper to be considered for publication in a journal, please indicate this when submitting your abstract.

If you are selected for full oral presentation, you will be asked to give a 20-minute oral presentation at the conference during the selected session, and your submitted abstract is included in the digital proceeding.

If you are selected for a Poster presentation you will be asked to give a 5-minute poster presentation of your research at the conference during the selected session, but no questions will be asked. This is in addition to presenting your poster at the exhibition (see poster exhibition guidance below).

Poster exhibition

If you are selected for poster exhibition, you will be asked to present your poster during the conference exhibition. Poster presenters need to print their own poster and bring it to the conference.