The Research Data Alliance (RDA) will hold its 27th Plenary Meeting (P27) in London, United Kingdom, from 6 to 8 October 2026, hosted by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The meeting is fully in-person, and RDA has framed it as the first run of a new plenary cadence the organisation is piloting going forward.
What’s happening
- Dates: 6-8 October 2026
- Location: London, United Kingdom (in-person)
- Host: UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)
- Theme: “Shaping a global open research commons,” per RDA’s own P27 event page
For background on what the Research Data Alliance is, how it organises its Working Groups and Interest Groups, and what an RDA Recommendation versus a Supporting Output means, see CASRAI’s dictionary entry — this article covers P27 specifically as a dated event and a change in meeting format, not the organisation itself.
Why the format matters: a new plenary cadence
RDA plenaries have run virtually or in hybrid form since 2020, a pattern that started as a pandemic accommodation and continued afterward largely because it kept the meetings broadly accessible to a global, resource-uneven membership. P27 is presented on RDA’s own site as a deliberate pilot of a different pattern: an in-person plenary in the second half of the year, paired with a fully virtual plenary earlier in the same year (RDA’s published schedule lists a Virtual Plenary, VP28, ahead of the next in-person Plenary, P29). For a membership organisation whose value depends heavily on Working Group and Interest Group face time, that’s a real operational bet — it trades some of the accessibility of an always-virtual/hybrid model for the collaboration density that only an in-person meeting reliably produces, at least for one meeting per year.
Whether this becomes RDA’s standing cadence or reverts after P27 is, as of this writing, an open question RDA itself has not resolved publicly — P27 is explicitly described as a pilot, not a permanent policy change.
Who this affects
P27 is relevant to the same audience that already tracks RDA’s Working Group outputs: research data managers, CRIS/PID system owners, institutional repository and data-infrastructure staff, and funders and infrastructure providers who implement RDA Recommendations. Several PID- and data-infrastructure standards already covered on this site trace back to RDA Working Group or Interest Group activity, including PIDINST (persistent identification of research instruments), the RDA DMP Common Standard and its DMP RDA-JSON-LD serialisation, and the Scholix framework for linking publications and datasets. Plenaries are where this kind of work gets proposed, reviewed, and pushed toward formal endorsement, so P27’s sessions and Birds-of-a-Feather meetings are a reasonable place to watch for what RDA’s PID and data-infrastructure Working Groups take up next.
Practical details for anyone considering attending
Per RDA’s own P27 pages, submission deadlines for sessions, ideas-pitch sessions, and posters fall in the May-June 2026 window, with early-bird registration open until late August 2026 and standard registration continuing up to the meeting dates. Reported registration fees span roughly GBP 200 to GBP 1,000 depending on participant category and registration type. Given how far in advance programme details typically firm up, anyone planning to attend or submit a session should confirm current deadlines and fees directly on RDA’s P27 page rather than relying on any fixed figure, since these details are the kind RDA tends to update as the meeting approaches.
Sources and further reading
- RDA, “RDA 27th Plenary Meeting (P27)” — rd-alliance.org/plenaries/p27/
- RDA, “Save the Date – RDA 27th Plenary Meeting (P27)” — rd-alliance.org/news/save-the-date-rda-27th-plenary-meeting-p27/
