Madrid, Spain, 23 October 2026

WECAN position on the exclusion of patient advocates from the ESMO Congress 2026 exhibition area

Patient advocates go to oncology congresses to work. We meet the teams designing clinical trials, the investigators running them and the researchers deciding what to study next, and we bring the priorities of patients, survivors and carers into those conversations. At the ESMO Congress 2026 in Madrid, a large part of that work has been put out of reach.

What happened

On October 12, 2026, less than two weeks before the congress, the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) told registered patient advocates that participants who are not licensed healthcare prescribers will have no access to the exhibition area. ESMO points to EU Directive 2001/83/EC, the EFPIA Code of Practice and its July 2025 rules governing medical congresses, and their implementation in Spain by Farmaindustria, the national pharmaceutical industry association. Patient advocates and patient organisations are explicitly listed among those who should not enter.

The patient community was not consulted. Directive 2001/83/EC has not changed, and patient advocates have had exhibition access at ESMO congresses for more than a decade – including the last time the congress took place in Madrid in 2023.

The impact

The exhibition area is where much of a congress’s professional exchange takes place. It is where advocates meet medical affairs and clinical development teams to discuss unmet needs, trial design and patient involvement, and where the unplanned conversations that often matter most happen. A separate track or lounge where we separate and cluster professional patient advocates alone together cannot replace that.

The disruption began before the congress even opened. Our members tell us that meetings with industry partners have been cancelled, moved to cafés and restaurants outside of the exhibit area or venue, or pushed back to video calls after the congress. Advocates who are accredited ESMO members are being treated as members of the public to be shielded from advertising, rather than as professional partners.

This is not only about ESMO. Haematology patient advocacy organisations faced the same restriction at the EHA congress in June 2026, European Breast Cancer Conference in March 2026 and the urology patient advocacy community have experienced this at the European Association of Urology (EAU) in London. It is a dangerous downward trend and without a common approach, each congress will reinterpret the same rules, and patient advocates will keep finding out at the last minute.

“We are not asking for special treatment. We are asking to keep doing the work ESMO itself invited us to do, as members, for more than a decade. Rules on medicines advertising were never meant to keep patients out of the room where research is discussed. We want to fix this with ESMO, industry and regulators before the next congress, not after it.”

Alex Filicevas, Chair, Board of Directors, WECAN Foundation

What we call for

1. Farmaindustria to set out publicly the specific provisions behind the restriction, and to commit to a solution that restores full participation for patient advocates before ESMO 2027.
2. ESMO and WECAN to jointly convene medical societies, including EHA and EAU, together with EFPIA and patient organisations before the end of 2026, to agree consistent, proportionate European principles for patient advocates at congresses. We are ready to start this work in Madrid.
3. EFPIA and national industry associations, including Farmaindustria, to review their congress rules with patient organisations at the table, distinguishing non-promotional professional exchange from promotion to the general public.
4. EU institutions to make that same distinction clear in the revision of EU pharmaceutical legislation now under way.
5. Industry partners to hold every meeting with patient advocates at ESMO 2026 in a space we can reach, and to raise this with their own trade associations at country and regional level.

If you are attending ESMO 2026 as a patient advocate, please record any barriers you face and send them to chair@wecanadvocate.eu. Your examples will shape the discussions that follow.