The Health and Safety Association of New Zealand will hold its 2026 conference at Tākina Wellington Convention and Exhibition Centre from 16 to 18 September 2026, marking ten years of HASANZ conferences and a decade since the Health and Safety at Work Act took effect. The dates correct an earlier directory listing that had the conference starting on 18 September.
The 2026 HASANZ Conference will bring New Zealand's workplace health and safety sector to Tākina Wellington Convention and Exhibition Centre from 16 to 18 September 2026. The event is run under the authority of the Health and Safety Association of New Zealand (HASANZ), the umbrella body representing the country's workplace health and safety professions, with logistics managed by a professional conference organiser.
According to the organiser's own event website, the gathering marks a decade of HASANZ conferences. The New Zealand Journal of Health and Safety Practice, published by Victoria University of Wellington — Te Herenga Waka, independently confirmed the same dates and venue in an announcement, noting the conference also falls a decade after the Health and Safety at Work Act came into force.
The conference carries the tagline "Echoing the Past, Embracing the Future" on its own site, while the academic journal's call for abstracts lists a companion theme of "Learning, Leading, Innovating" for presentations and posters. Both framings point to the same intent: reviewing ten years of progress in workplace health and safety while addressing anticipated regulatory change and new technology in the sector.
A call for presentation proposals opened in February 2026, with abstracts assessed against criteria including relevance to the conference theme, audience appeal, originality and currency, according to the journal's announcement. The event site states its programme includes keynote speakers, workshops, symposia and a social programme.
HASANZ describes itself, on its own website, as "an association of associations" — a representative body bringing together New Zealand's various workplace health and safety professional groups. Establishing such a body was a commitment under the Government's 2013 Working Safer package, developed in response to the 2012 Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety. HASANZ's stated objectives include workforce development, enabling its member associations through collaboration, engaging with the business community, and advocacy on health and safety legislation and regulation. It also maintains the HASANZ Register, an online directory of competent health and safety advisers used by businesses seeking guidance.
HASANZ's events calendar lists this as its flagship annual conference, alongside a 2024 HASANZ Conference held 18–20 September that year, indicating an established, recurring fixture in the sector calendar.
The event site lists its intended audience as workplace health and safety professionals; health and safety policy makers and regulators; business owners, directors and health and safety managers; professional bodies and national business association leaders; public sector health and safety managers; government and local government representatives; education providers, academics and researchers in health and safety fields; human resources advisers; recruitment agencies serving the sector; and service and product providers or commercial partners.
Tākina Wellington Convention and Exhibition Centre, at 217 Wakefield Street in central Wellington, is confirmed as the venue by both the event's own site and the venue's own website. According to Tākina, the centre offers two divisible plenary halls seating up to 700 and 1,600 people respectively, up to 2,500 square metres of combined exhibition and catering space, up to 11 break-out spaces, two dedicated secretariat spaces and five green rooms with AV connectivity — flexible enough, per the venue, for events ranging from 20 to 2,500 attendees. Tākina Events also manages event space at the adjacent Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
The event site's own travel guidance notes Wellington Airport is about a ten-minute drive from the city centre, with the Airport Express bus and Metlink services available, and states the compact city centre is easily walkable from the venue — a factor for a three-day programme where delegates disperse to hotels across Te Aro and the waterfront each evening.
As a recurring, decade-old national conference run by a sector-wide representative body and hosted at one of Wellington's two major purpose-built venues, the HASANZ Conference sits alongside other established annual health and safety events on the HASANZ calendar, including the Safeguard National Health & Safety Conference and the National Health and Safety Leaders' Summit. Its return to Tākina continues a pattern of national association conferences using the venue since it opened, reinforcing Wellington's position as a repeat host for professional-association business of this scale.
The dig also corrects the schedule record: the conference opens on 16 September, not 18 September as previously listed.
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