ACA restructures Corrosion & Prevention 2026 into a three-city roadshow, with Christchurch opening at Majestic on Durham

The Australasian Corrosion Association's 2026 New Zealand event is going ahead in Christchurch, but not in the form the calendars recorded. What was listed across the sector as Corrosion & Prevention 2026 (C&P2026) has been restructured by the ACA into the NZ/AU Technical Symposium & Expo 2026 — a three-city roadshow rather than a single annual congress. The Christchurch leg opens the series at Majestic on Durham on 8-9 October 2026, under the theme "Future Infrastructure Resilience: Innovation, Robotics, Asset Integrity and Durability".

The original branding has not entirely disappeared. The official site still runs at corrosion-prevention2026.eventsairsite.com and carries "Corrosion & Prevention 2026 - Christchurch" as its site title, and the association's own delegate hotel offer pages still use the C&P2026 slug. But the ACA's on-site copy is unambiguous about the change: the association says the new format was developed following consultation with members, industry stakeholders, conference leadership and host partners, and that the three-city series is intended to build momentum toward a future New Zealand-hosted Corrosion & Prevention Conference. In line with the existing rotation, the ACA confirms the 2027 Corrosion & Prevention Conference will proceed in Adelaide.

Two things follow for anyone holding a Christchurch booking made against the old listing. The venue is Majestic on Durham, which the ACA site names directly — not Te Pae Christchurch Convention Centre. And the dates are 8-9 October, a two-day format rather than the multi-day congress pattern the C&P conference has historically run.

Who runs it

The Australasian Corrosion Association describes itself on its own about page as the leading body for the handling and mitigation of corrosion and its impacts across Australia and New Zealand — a not-for-profit, membership-based association operating accredited training courses, an annual conference and a branch network. Its structure, per the ACA, comprises a Board, a Council representing the branches, branch committees, technical groups, the Young Corrosion Group for members under 35, and a paid head office in Coburg North, Victoria. Most roles outside head office are elected and voluntary.

The association runs a New Zealand branch alongside its Australian state branches, and seven technical groups covering applicators, cathodic protection, coatings, concrete, defence, oil gas and energy, and the water industry. Training is delivered in partnership with sister association AMPP.

The series being reshaped here has real scale behind it. The ACA's own conference archive records that Corrosion & Prevention 2019 in Melbourne drew more than 600 attendees and 62 exhibitors across more than 80 technical papers, with an awards dinner of over 400 people. C&P 2023 ran in Perth over 12-15 November. In an ACA news post dated 24 August 2026, the association refers to the 2026 programme as the "ACA Symposium Series 2026" and confirms its annual awards — among them the Corrosion Medal, the Rust Award, the Golden Trowel and the Victor Nightingall Award — are being carried into the new format.

Who it's for, and what's on

This is a technical audience: asset owners, engineers, consultants, contractors, coatings applicators and suppliers. The ACA has kept its peer-review machinery intact. Abstracts have closed, full papers were due by 19 July 2026 with no extension, and the association says accepted work proceeds through peer review to published proceedings as before. Authors with accepted abstracts were invited to nominate one or more host cities.

The published Christchurch speaker programme runs to roughly 28 presentations. It is headlined by the PF Thompson Lecture from Professor David Williams of the University of Auckland's School of Chemical Sciences and the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, on unlocking the secrets of corrosion science, and by Mark Sigley delivering the second Brian Martin Memorial Lecture, on assessing cathodic protection.

The New Zealand content is genuinely local. Mohammad Ali presents a 19-year record of impressed current cathodic protection on the prestressed concrete elements of the Calliope Wharf access jetty at Devonport. Sigit Prabowo reports on long-term corrosion of stainless steel couplings in a New Zealand HVDC thyristor valve cooling system. Malcolm Ingham covers telluric currents, and Raed El Sarraf appears twice — on laser ablation for steel bridges, and on the practical limits of agentic AI tools in the corrosion industry.

The international slate is substantial for a two-day regional event. Abdulhameed Al-Hashem presents on seawater injection pipelines in North Kuwait, Tomas Prosek on steel and hydrogen, and a cluster of Japanese researchers — Koji Fushimi, Masatoshi Sakairi, Teruhisa Tatsuoka, Toshiyuki Sunaba, Yasuyuki Miyano and Gemba Kikuchi — on atmospheric corrosion in cold and heavy-snowfall regions, transmission tower hardware, painted-surface monitoring sensors and crude oil flowline internals. A Research in Progress forum sits alongside the main programme.

The venue

Majestic on Durham is at 189 Durham Street South, in central Christchurch. The venue's own material describes an auditorium that seats up to 500 with a total venue capacity of up to 700, and 250 to 300 seated for dinners depending on the use of a band or dance floor; a foyer that opens onto an outdoor deck; a separate Blue Room meeting space that can be divided in two; a full industrial kitchen; and in-house production, sound and lighting equipment. Off-street parking is available. The scale is a comfortable fit for a two-day symposium with an exhibition floor and a networking dinner, rather than a purpose-built convention centre footprint.

The ACA has blocked delegate rates across a wide spread of central-city accommodation — among them Ibis Christchurch, Novotel Cathedral Square, Quest on Cambridge, Quest Cathedral Junction, Wyndham Garden, The Mayfair, Sudima Christchurch City, Drifter, Hotel 115, Rydges Latimer, Christchurch City Hotel, Crowne Plaza and Carnmore. Booking windows open as early as 2 October and run through to 11 October. All sit in the central city, within walking distance of Durham Street South.

Delegate movement is the more interesting logistics story. This is an inbound trans-Tasman event with an international speaker list, and the Christchurch leg is followed six days later by Auckland on 14-15 October at AUT, then Melbourne on 16-17 November at Evoqe Events. The ACA is explicitly designing for people and freight to move between legs. Exhibitors are supplied with a professionally printed 1.8m by 2m backdrop at each stand rather than freighting their own, and the association offers a complimentary freight coordination service to move printed backdrops and banners between the two New Zealand events and on to Melbourne. Authors, likewise, can present in more than one city.

Why it matters for New Zealand business events

The honest read is mixed. New Zealand does not get the full Corrosion & Prevention congress in 2026 — that returns to Adelaide in 2027 — and Christchurch's share is a two-day symposium in a mid-scale venue rather than a multi-day convention centre congress. Measured against the original listing, that is a reduction in delegate days and room nights.

Measured against nothing, it is not. Two of the three legs are in New Zealand, and Christchurch gets first billing and the series' opening theme. The ACA has put its highest-profile technical lectures, its published proceedings process and its award programme behind the New Zealand dates, and it has kept an international speaker list travelling for them. The association also states plainly that the roadshow is intended to build toward a future New Zealand-hosted Corrosion & Prevention Conference — which makes October 2026 a proving run for a larger bid, with Christchurch as the first city on the board.