ANZBMS brings its 36th Annual Scientific Meeting across the Tasman to Auckland's NZICC

The 36th Australian and New Zealand Bone and Mineral Society Annual Scientific Meeting will be held at the New Zealand International Convention Centre in Auckland from Sunday 6 to Wednesday 9 September 2026. ANZBMS confirms the Auckland location and the NZICC venue on its own website and on the dedicated conference site at anzbmsconference.org, which is live and carries a full published programme. The society describes the 2026 edition as "heading back across the Tasman Sea" — the ASM rotates between ANZBMS regions, and this is New Zealand's turn.

Registration opens at 1:30pm on Sunday 6 September in the level 5 foyer, with the meeting closing at 1:00pm on Wednesday 9 September after the President's farewell message. All programme times are listed in NZST.

Who runs it

ANZBMS was established in 1988 with Professor T. J. Martin as founding president, and describes itself as the principal professional body for biomedical scientists and clinicians working in metabolic bone disease and mineral metabolism across Australia and New Zealand. The society states it has over 450 members, split roughly 45 percent clinicians and 55 percent biomedical scientists, and is affiliated with the Australian Society of Medical Research and the International Federation of Musculoskeletal Research.

The society's council structure is explicitly trans-Tasman: each region — New Zealand, Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales and the ACT, Victoria and Tasmania, and South Australia and the Northern Territory — is represented by at least one councillor. The ANZBMS logo carries a spine motif that the society says represents both bone and the silver fern of New Zealand.

The Annual Scientific Meeting has run every year since 1990, with the host location shared between the regions on a rotating basis. New Zealand has hosted repeatedly: Queenstown in 1993, Auckland in 2001, Queenstown again in 2007, 2014 and 2018. Recent Australian editions were Newcastle in 2023, Adelaide in 2024 (jointly with the Endocrine Society of Australia and the Society for Reproductive Biology) and Cairns in 2025. ANZBMS also has a track record of co-hosting: past ASMs have been held jointly with the IFMRS, the Japanese Society for Bone and Mineral Research, the Endocrine Society of Australia, the Society of Reproductive Biology, the Australia and New Zealand Orthopaedic Research Society, and the Molecular and Experimental Pathology Society of Australasia.

The 2026 meeting is led by ANZBMS President Michelle McDonald, with the Scientific Program Committee chaired by President Elect Associate Professor Christian Girgis and co-chairs Dr Melissa Cantley (basic) and Dr Michael Bennett (clinical). Conference management is handled by ASN Events, based in Australia.

Who it's for

ANZBMS positions the meeting for early and mid-career investigators, clinicians, basic scientists and allied health professionals working across the musculoskeletal field. The published programme bears that out. Alongside the plenary and symposium sessions there are two dedicated young investigator award symposia — the Roger Melick Young Investigator Award and the Christopher and Magie Nordin Young Investigator Award — an Early Career Investigator Committee breakfast symposium, two ECIC BONE symposia, two poster sessions and a Clinical Cases in Metabolic Bone Disease seminar and dinner.

The scientific themes are current. Symposia cover the new anabolic era in osteoporosis therapy, interactions between the gut microbiome and bone, senescence and bone ageing, endocrine and cellular crosstalk between muscle and bone, skeletal fragility after cancer therapy, research co-design and consumer engagement, and — reflecting where the field has moved — a session titled "From Weight Loss to Bone Loss? Understanding Bone Health in the Obesity Drug Era" and a digital innovations session covering deep learning fracture prediction.

Invited speakers are drawn internationally as well as regionally. Dr Christopher Hernandez (University of California) and Professor Bente Langdahl (Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark) are listed as headline invited speakers, joined by Associate Professor Nikola Štoković (University of Zagreb), Dr Jianguo Tao (Westlake University, China), and a substantial Australian contingent from Deakin, Monash, Victoria University, UTS, Edith Cowan and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. Lisa Blake of Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora speaks on lived experience and co-design.

Social programming includes a welcome function with a Welcome to Country, a "Bones & Bites" evening, the ANZBMS Annual General Meeting and the conference dinner.

The venue

The New Zealand International Convention Centre sits at 101 Hobson Street in Auckland Central. The conference organisers describe it as the country's premier convention and exhibition venue, purpose-built to host world-class events, connected directly to accommodation and a short walk from the waterfront and the city's shopping and cultural precincts.

NZICC states it has 33 meeting rooms suited to groups of 20 or more, an exhibition space — Ariki Hall — with capacity for 4,500 guests, and around 8,000 hotel rooms within easy walking distance. The venue also holds Qualmark Gold and EarthCheck Silver accreditation and is a member of AIPC and ICCA.

ANZBMS is using level 5 of the building: registration and catering in L5 Foyer 1 and 2, main sessions in Meeting Room 503/504/505, concurrent sessions and sponsored symposia in Rooms 507 and 508, and council meetings in Room 401. The official accommodation block is entirely central-city and walkable — Sudima Auckland City on Nelson Street (directly opposite the NZICC), Holiday Inn Express on Wyndham Street, Hotel Indigo Auckland at St Patrick's Square, SkyCity Hotel and the Horizon Hotel on Hobson Street. The Holiday Inn Express allocation is already listed as sold out on the conference site.

Why it matters for New Zealand business events

This is a genuine inbound win rather than a domestic meeting. ANZBMS is an Australian-headquartered society — its registered address is Macquarie Street, Sydney — and the great majority of its membership, its programme committee and its presenting authors are Australian. The delegate flow is therefore predominantly westbound-to-eastbound across the Tasman, with additional long-haul arrivals from the United States, Denmark, Croatia, China and Japan-adjacent research networks.

The organisers have put a formal air arrangement in place: Air New Zealand is offering a discount on return travel from anywhere it flies within Australia to Auckland for travel between 3 and 12 September 2026, booked under a dedicated ANZBMS landing page. The conference site also carries a detailed New Zealand entry-requirements page covering NZeTA, visitor visas and the New Zealand Traveller Declaration, with separate guidance for Australian citizens, Australian permanent residents and non-Australian residents of Australia — the kind of pre-arrival infrastructure that indicates the organisers are planning for meaningful international volume.

The timing is also worth noting. A four-day trans-Tasman scientific congress landing in early September puts delegate nights into Auckland's CBD in a shoulder period, with the entire accommodation block inside walking distance of the venue.