Europe faces mounting pressures from within and beyond its borders. Rising polarisation, democratic backsliding, shifting global cleavages, and successive crises are testing the foundations of European governance and the resilience of solidarity among member states and citizens.

The EGPP Annual Conference 2026 brings together research from across the programme as a showcase of all projects currently running under the EGPP umbrella. The EGPP Annual Conference draws on projects spanning a wide range of topics, offering a panoramic view of european politics and governance under stress: affective polarization, European solidarity, crisis governance and pandemic recovery, voter information and Voting Advice Applications, EU enlargement and global risks to EU security, transnational identities and group politics, gender and political violence, and the political economy of the climate and creative transitions.

The event will also combine experimental interventions, large-scale surveys, comparative party and electoral analysis, and historical perspectives on global cleavage structures, bringing together the methodological breadth that defines the EGPP.

The conference will be opened by the inaugural Brigid Laffan Lecture, delivered by Brigid Laffan herself, and will conclude with a policy roundtable bringing researchers into dialogue with practitioners on the future of European integration and democratic resilience.

This event is in person only.