OPUS International Group Relations Conference 2026: Leadership?

Exploring agency and voice in times of shifting power

Registration is now open for the OPUS International Group Relations Conference 2026, which will take place through a combination of online sessions and in-person days in London.

The title of the 2026 edition, “Leadership? Exploring agency and voice in times of shifting power”, opens a space for inquiry into leadership at a time marked by instability, social transformation, overlapping crises, changing power structures and new forms of polarisation.

The conference sits within the tradition of Group Relations Conferences and offers an immersive learning experience focused on the conscious and unconscious processes that shape groups, organisations and wider social systems. Participants and staff will form a temporary learning organisation in which authority, role, leadership, followership, agency and voice can be explored as they emerge in lived experience.

The conference is suitable for anyone interested in understanding the impact of the self on the group, and of the group on the self: leaders, executives, organisational practitioners, students of the human and social sciences, psychologists, psychotherapists, community organisers and citizens wishing to explore the contexts in which we live, work, learn and grow. No previous Group Relations Conference experience is required.

The programme includes two online days and three in-person days in London, at Voluntary Action Islington, a few minutes’ walk from King’s Cross/St Pancras International Station. The online days will take place on 6 and 11 November 2026; the in-person part of the conference will be held from 13 to 15 November 2026.

Two pathways are available: a general pathway open to all participants and a Training Group for those who have already attended at least two Group Relations Conferences and wish to develop their consultancy skills. Places are limited to 36 participants. The closing date for applications is 30 October 2026 at 17:00 London time.

In a time of shifting power, contested leadership and increasing complexity, the OPUS conference offers a bounded and structured setting in which to study what happens in the “here and now” of groups: how authority is taken up, how conflicts and silences are experienced, how roles, alliances, exclusions, collaboration and responsibility emerge.

For further information and registration, please visit the official OPUS conference website.