Psychiatrists take their national conference to the Bay of Islands as RANZCP books out the Copthorne

The RANZCP 2026 New Zealand Conference runs from 12 to 14 October 2026 at the Copthorne Hotel and Resort Bay of Islands, near Paihia, with pre-conference workshops on Sunday 11 October. Registration is open, the scientific programme has been published, and the College lists the event as hybrid delivery. The venue, town and dates on the official conference site match the entry carried in the Meeting Newz coming-events calendar, so nothing in the existing listing needed correcting.

Who runs it

The conference is convened on behalf of the RANZCP New Zealand National Committee, Tū Te Akaaka Roa. The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists is the body responsible for training, educating and representing psychiatrists across both countries, accredited by the Australian Medical Council and the Medical Council of New Zealand to deliver specialist medical education, training and professional development. Its head office is in Melbourne; its Aotearoa arm, the Tū Te Akaaka Roa NZ National Office, supports the New Zealand National Committee, the New Zealand Training Committee, the New Zealand faculty and section committees and the Vocational Education Advisory Body. The National Committee is chaired by Dr Hiran Thabrew, and the College's Te Kaunihera (Māori Health Committee) works alongside it, drawing on the leadership of Kaumātua Ms Moe Milne.

This is the College's New Zealand branch conference rather than its trans-Tasman annual Congress, which is a separate and larger meeting. The New Zealand conference moves around the country: the 2025 edition was held at the Dunedin Centre from 8 to 10 September 2025, and the organising committee signed off that event by pointing delegates to the Bay of Islands for 2026. Conference management is handled by New Zealand PCO Outshine, with the delegate-facing site built on the EventsAir platform.

The kaupapa, the programme and who it is for

The conference theme is *Ko te mauri he mea huna ki te moana* — "Te Tiriti based solutions to inequities in mental health and addictions". The organisers state the intent plainly: to highlight mental health and addiction issues faced in the North and to identify innovative solutions through a Treaty-based relationship. The mihi on the conference site was authored by Whaea Moe Milne, Tui Taurua and Dr Hinemoa Elder, and the conference branding uses patterns supplied by Northland Māori artist BJ Natanahira.

Scientific sessions run Monday to Wednesday and combine invited speakers with free paper and poster presentations, symposia, and panel and Q&A time. Separate abstract streams cover oral, poster and symposium submissions, Scholarly Project presentations and medical student presentations, with abstract prizes awarded. Invited speakers listed include Dr Maria Baker (Te Hiku Hauora, Muriwhenua), Dr David Codyre (Tamaki Health, Auckland), Dr Moana Eruera (Ngāpuhi Iwi Social Services, Kaikohe), Mr Peter-Lucas Jones (Te Hiku Media, Kaitaia), Dr Kiri Prentice (Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand), Tui Taurua as a lived experience kaitiaki, and Dr Marshall Watson from Flinders Medical Centre in Adelaide — a speaker list weighted deliberately towards Te Tai Tokerau practitioners and organisations.

Two in-person pre-conference workshops are scheduled for the Sunday afternoon in the Copthorne's Treaty Rooms: a Balint Group workshop led by Dr Rutger De Ridder and Dr Penny Woods, and a psychedelic-assisted therapy workshop presented by Dr Tehseen Nooran, Anna-Leigh Hodge and Dr Tom Paterson. The audience is College Fellows, Affiliates and registrars, plus trainees and medical students presenting work. There is a trade exhibition, and the conference charity partner is Manaaki Tāngata | Victim Support, which will hold a stand in the exhibition area.

The venue, and how delegates will move

The Copthorne Hotel and Resort Bay of Islands sits on the waterfront in 60 acres of subtropical gardens inside the Waitangi National Trust Reserve, about five minutes' drive from Paihia. It is a Millennium Hotels and Resorts New Zealand property, 4-star and Qualmark Enviro-Gold rated. Its main conference space is the standalone Waitaha Events Centre on the Waitangi River estuary — 529 square metres with a private deck and a stated capacity of 500 — supported by the ground-floor Treaty Rooms, which offer around 320 square metres across combinable rooms plus two permanent boardrooms.

Accommodation is the pressure point of a single-site regional conference. The organisers have secured room allocations at the Copthorne itself and at the Kingsgate Hotel Autolodge Paihia on Marsden Road, roughly a five-minute drive or twenty-minute walk from the venue, and on 21 August 2026 posted a notice that rooms at the conference hotel were limited. Delegates are booking directly with the hotels rather than through the registration system.

Access is by road or air. The conference site puts Paihia at approximately three hours' drive from Auckland, with Bay of Islands Airport at Kerikeri the nearest airport at about a 50-minute flight from Auckland, and Whangārei and Kaitaia the other Northland options; Air New Zealand is the main domestic operator on those routes and InterCity coaches serve the region. Movement during the conference is spread across the Bay: the welcome reception is in the Waitaha exhibition space on the Monday evening, te reo Māori breakfast sessions run at the hotel restaurant on the Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, the registrar networking function is held at the Duke of Marlborough in Russell — reached by ferry from Paihia — and the conference dinner is at the Tahuaroa function centre inside Te Rau Aroha on the Upper Waitangi Treaty Grounds, with a local kapa haka performance and an optional museum tour.

Why it matters in New Zealand business events

A specialist medical college taking a three-day national conference to a resort hotel in a town of a few thousand people, rather than to a purpose-built convention centre in Auckland or Wellington, is the clearest kind of evidence that regional New Zealand can hold association business at scale. The residential single-site model — sessions, exhibition, accommodation and social programme within a few kilometres — is what makes it work, and the sold-down room block shows where the ceiling sits.

It is also not an isolated booking. The same Meeting Newz 2026 calendar lists the NZSTA Annual Conference at Waitangi on 3-4 September 2026, putting two association conferences into the Bay of Islands inside six weeks. For Northland's business events sector, October delivers shoulder-season demand into a destination whose leisure peak sits elsewhere in the calendar — and it does so with a programme built around the place itself rather than in spite of it.