The Annual Queenstown Update in Anaesthesia returns 20-22 August 2026, moving from its long-time Heritage Hotel home to the QT Hotel Queenstown. The JAFA-run scientific meeting pairs lecture sessions with hands-on clinical workshops and an Ambulance Victoria keynote.
The Annual Queenstown Update in Anaesthesia (AQUA) returns to the resort town from 20 to 22 August 2026, and this edition comes with a change of address: the New Zealand Society of Anaesthetists lists AQUA 2026 at a new venue, the QT Hotel Queenstown, after years of running at the Heritage Hotel on Fernhill Road. Registration is open through the organiser's EventsAir portal.
AQUA is hosted by the Joint Anaesthesia Faculty Auckland (JAFA), and promoted through the New Zealand Society of Anaesthetists (anaesthesia.nz). It is a recurring annual continuing-education meeting for the specialty; aggregator listings describe the 2026 event as the 18th in the series. Conference administration is handled by a dedicated events team, with the programme built around invited clinical faculty.
The delegate base is anaesthetists, intensivists, trainees and allied peri-operative clinicians from across New Zealand and Australia. Per the NZSA programme, the 2026 keynote is Associate Professor David Anderson, Medical Director of Ambulance Victoria and an ICU intensivist at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, speaking on intensive care and on the management of cardiac arrest including out-of-hospital arrest. The format mixes plenary update talks with practical workshops: BATS on Ice ultrasound for regional anaesthesia on Thursday 20 August, Major Haemorrhage and Critical Procedures on the Friday afternoon, and Anaphylaxis workshops on the Saturday afternoon.
AQUA 2026 is set at the QT Hotel Queenstown, the organiser-confirmed new home for the meeting. Past AQUA programmes leaned heavily on the surrounding landscape - ski-bus transfers to Coronet Peak, a mountain BBQ, and a conference dinner reached by the historic TSS Earnslaw steamer across Lake Wakatipu - which signals the kind of compact, high-touch delegate movement a Queenstown host venue supports. Queenstown Airport sits roughly 10 minutes from the town centre, and the town's density of hotels and lakefront restaurants keeps a three-day medical meeting walkable, though the organiser has historically warned delegates to book flights early because August is peak season.
AQUA is a durable example of the association and medical-congress segment that underpins Queenstown's off-summer business-events calendar: a repeatable, multi-day scientific meeting that fills accommodation and venue space during the ski season. The 2026 shift to the QT Hotel is a straightforward reporting point - an established congress changing its principal venue - and reflects how New Zealand's resort destinations compete to retain long-running annual professional gatherings.
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