How CI Teams Cover ACC, ESC and AHA Cardiology Meetings

For cardiovascular and metabolic drug developers, a handful of medical meetings decide when new trial results become public: the American College of Cardiology (ACC) in spring, the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) in late summer, and the American Heart Association (AHA) in November, with diabetes, obesity and liver meetings alongside. Competitive intelligence (CI) teams plan around these dates, and around the embargo rules that decide when the news can be reported.

Updated November 4, 2026.

When and where are the big meetings in 2026?

• ACC.26: March 28-30, 2026, Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, New Orleans (ACC).
• ADA Scientific Sessions: June 5-8, 2026, New Orleans (Pharmacy Times).
• ESC Congress 2026: August 28-31, Messe München, Munich, Germany (ESC).
• EASD: September 28 to October 2, 2026, Allianz MiCo, Milan (EASD).
• AASLD The Liver Meeting: November 5-9, 2026, Colorado Convention Center, Denver (AASLD).
• AHA Scientific Sessions 2026: November 7-9, McCormick Place, Chicago, with pre-meeting programs on Friday, November 6 (TCTMD).
• ObesityWeek 2026: November 14-17, Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, National Harbor, Maryland, near Washington, DC (ObesityWeek).

As of November 4, 2026, the AASLD meeting starts tomorrow and AHA starts Saturday; ACC, ADA, ESC and EASD have already happened.

How do embargoes work?

An embargo is a rule that data may not be made public before a set time. The rules differ by society, so CI teams keep them side by side.

• ESC: presentations, including Hot Line results, are embargoed until the scheduled start of the session or official ESC publication. The policy (updated January 10, 2026) applies to social media too, and breaches can cost journalists their credentials (ESC media and embargo policy).
• AASLD: regular abstracts were released on October 5, 2026 at 8 AM Mountain Time. Late-breaking abstracts are released on November 5 at 8 AM Mountain Time. The policy lets publicly traded companies seek exceptions for required disclosures, limited to top-line data, and the penalty for a breach can include removal from the meeting and a possible two-year ban (AASLD).
• ObesityWeek: accepted abstracts lift at 12:00 p.m. Eastern on Saturday, November 14, 2026. Abstracts that registered attendees can see earlier do not lift the embargo (ObesityWeek).
• ACC and AHA: we could not open the current policy documents (the AHA site and the ACC PDF did not load for us). Search summaries of those documents say that ACC late-breaking results are embargoed until the start of the session or an ACC press conference, whichever comes first, and that AHA late-breaking science is embargoed until the time of presentation. Check the societies’ own current policies before relying on this.

What did ACC and ESC 2026 actually show?

ACC.26. TCTMD’s preview counted 7 late-breaking clinical trial sessions with 27 presentations (TCTMD). Two examples we could verify: on March 28, Boston Scientific reported that CHAMPION-AF (3,000 patients) met non-inferiority for stroke, cardiovascular or unexplained death, or systemic embolism for its Watchman FLX device versus oral anticoagulants (5.7% vs 4.8%), with less non-procedural bleeding (10.9% vs 19.0%), and the results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine; these are the company’s figures (Boston Scientific). On March 29, SPIRIT-HF found no significant benefit of spironolactone in 730 patients with heart failure with mildly reduced or preserved ejection fraction (rate ratio 1.32; 95% CI 0.79 to 2.21), and presenters called it underpowered (TCTMD).

ESC Congress 2026. ESC said 59 trials would be presented in 12 Hot Line sessions, and named LIBREXIA ACS, PRESC1SE-MI, CARDIO-TTRansform, ACACIA-HCM and STAREE among them. On August 29, LIBREXIA ACS reported that milvexian did not reduce cardiovascular events after acute coronary syndrome (5.4% vs 5.1% with placebo; hazard ratio 1.05), simultaneously published in the New England Journal of Medicine (News-Medical). It is part of the story in our factor XI inhibitor note.

What is scheduled at AHA 2026?

No AHA 2026 late-breaking results are public as of November 4. According to TCTMD’s preview, scheduled late-breaking sessions include (TCTMD):

• Saturday, November 7, 8:35 AM: ZEUS and Lp(a)HORIZON, in a session honoring Eugene Braunwald. Novartis announced in September that Lp(a)HORIZON missed its primary endpoint; see our pelacarsen note.
• Saturday, November 7, 1:45 PM: stroke outcomes, including OCEANIC-STROKE.
• Monday, November 9, 8:00 AM: cardiometabolic risk reduction, including TYDAL-TIMI 78 and SYNCHRONIZE-CVOT.

TCTMD gives no time zone, so these are presumably Chicago times.

Not every result waits for a meeting. Novartis released Lp(a)HORIZON topline results on September 4, more than two months before the AHA session, and AASLD’s policy explicitly allows listed companies to seek limited exceptions for required disclosures. A CI calendar therefore tracks company announcements as well as conference dates, and treats the full presentation as the point where claims can be checked against data.

What do CI teams do around a meeting?

• Before: read the published program, list the trials by competitor and mark session times against embargo rules.
• During: compare each presentation with the abstract, company release and journal paper, noting differences.
• After: record what was and was not shown, and update the trial and pipeline records.

Note that abstract release timing varies. We verified AASLD’s and ObesityWeek’s dates above, but we could not verify when AHA, ACC or ESC release their regular abstracts, so check each society’s own page.

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This article is for informational and competitive-intelligence purposes only and is not medical advice. Approvals, labels and trial results change; verify details against current prescribing information and primary sources.