Dental Conferences 2026 and 2027: Dates, Cities and DSO Events by Month

It is November, the CE budget for next year is due, and the conference lists you find still advertise meetings that already happened, or one that will not happen at all. The office manager wants dates she can put on the calendar. The doctor wants to know which meeting is worth closing the office for. And if the practice is shopping for new software or imaging, someone wants to walk an exhibit floor first.

Every date in this calendar comes from the organizer's own website, read on 4 November 2026, with the page linked. Where an organizer had not yet published a date, we say so instead of guessing. It covers the big regional meetings, the specialty academies, office-manager and DSO events, and what to do about your office's IT before the team travels and when you evaluate technology on the floor.

Which dental conferences are coming up in 2026 and 2027?

From now to the end of 2027, the largest general meetings are Greater New York (late November), Yankee (January), Chicago Midwinter (2027 dates to be announced on cds.org), Hinman (March), CDA Presents (May), the TDA Meeting (May) and the Florida Dental Convention (June). Group and DSO leaders have Women in DSO in March and Dykema's DSO conference in July.

Dates read on each organizer's own site on 4 November 2026. Organizers move dates and venues; confirm on the official page before you book travel or close the office.

Dental conferences by month

Grouped by month, the calendar has two busy seasons: January to May for the large regional meetings, and September for office-manager, periodontal and group-practice events. Summer is the specialty and DSO season. Use this section to plan around your own slow weeks.

November and December 2026

• • Greater New York Dental Meeting, Nov 27–Dec 1, 2026, Javits Center, New York. Exhibits run Nov 29 to Dec 1. The organizer also publishes its next two years: Nov 26–30, 2027 and Nov 24–28, 2028.
• • The American Academy of Periodontology's 2026 meeting ran Oct 29 to Nov 1 in Seattle, so it is already over.

January 2027

• • Seattle Study Club Symposium, Jan 14–16, Marco Island, FL. A members' meeting rather than an open trade show.
• • Rocky Mountain Dental Convention, Jan 21–23, Denver. The organizer also lists Jan 20–22, 2028 and Jan 18–20, 2029.
• • Yankee Dental Congress, Jan 28–30, Boston. Run by the Massachusetts Dental Society and "held in Boston each January."

February 2027

• • LMT Lab Day Chicago, Feb 25–27, Hyatt Regency Chicago. The 42nd edition, for dental laboratories and lab technology.

March 2027

• • Women in DSO Empower & Grow, Mar 3–5, ARIA Resort & Casino, Las Vegas.
• • Thomas P. Hinman Dental Meeting, Mar 18–20, Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta.
• • AACD Scientific Session, Mar 31–Apr 3, The Diplomat Beach Resort, Hollywood, FL. These are the dates on AACD's own conference-dates page, read 4 November 2026. Other listings give April 1–3; go by AACD's page. AACD also lists April 19–22, 2028 at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas.

April 2027

• • Pacific Northwest Dental Conference, Apr 1–3, Summit at the Seattle Convention Center.
• • AAE Annual Meeting (AAE27), Apr 14–17, San Antonio.
• • Star of the North Meeting, Apr 22–24, Saint Paul RiverCentre, St. Paul.

May 2027

• • CDA Presents, May 13–15, Anaheim Convention Center. CDA says: "CDA Presents will only be held in Anaheim in 2027," so there is no San Francisco edition that year.
• • TDA Meeting, May 13–15, San Antonio. Exhibit hall May 13–14.

June 2027

• • AAO Annual Session, June 4–6, Vancouver Convention Centre, Vancouver, Canada. The orthodontists' meeting is outside the US in 2027; plan for passports. Other listings give June 4–7; the AAO's annual session site reads June 4–6.
• • Florida Dental Convention, June 24–26. The Florida Dental Association also publishes June 15–17, 2028, June 7–9, 2029, June 20–22, 2030 and June 19–21, 2031, the longest horizon of any meeting here.

July 2027

• • Dykema's Definitive Conference for DSOs, July 7–9, Gaylord Rockies Resort, Denver area. Hosted by a law firm, with tracks for DSO leadership, legal and finance.
• • AGD Scientific Session, July 8–10, Chicago. Other listings give July 7–10; AGD's own meeting page reads July 8–10, so go by that.

September 2027

• • AADOM Annual Conference, Sept 9–11, Fairmont Princess Resort, Scottsdale. The main national meeting for dental office managers.
• • AAP Annual Meeting, Sept 16–19, Boston.

October and November 2027

• • ADHA Annual Conference, Oct 15–17, Phoenix.
• • ADA House of Delegates, Oct 29–Nov 1, Denver. This is the ADA's governance meeting, not a scientific session (see below).
• • Greater New York Dental Meeting, Nov 26–30, New York.

Dates to be announced

• • Chicago Dental Society Midwinter Meeting, Chicago. The 2027 dates are to be announced on cds.org. The society's site did not list them on 4 November 2026 and its meeting registration site did not load for us, so we have not printed a date. CDS's site says it looks forward to "seeing you at McCormick Place West in Chicago."

Which 2026 dental conferences already took place?

Most of the 2026 season is over. The table lists the 2026 editions whose dates we could still read on the organizer's own site, so you can see the usual month and city for each meeting when you plan 2027. Several organizers now show only their next edition.

Read on each organizer's site on 4 November 2026. Yankee, Hinman, Chicago Midwinter, Star of the North, CDA Presents, Rocky Mountain and AADOM also held 2026 meetings, but their sites now show only the next edition.

DSO and group-practice events

Group-practice leaders meet on a separate circuit from the clinical meetings: ADSO's events, Dykema's DSO conference, Women in DSO and the Dental Leadership Summit. The agendas cover acquisitions, finance, operations and centralized services. If your group is past a handful of offices, these rooms are where peers compare notes on standardizing software and support.

From each organizer's own events page, read 4 November 2026.

For context on who runs the largest groups attending these events, see our sourced list of the largest DSOs in the US in 2026. How multi-location support is organized is on our DSO IT support page.

Specialty dental meetings

Each specialty academy holds one main annual meeting. In 2027 the endodontists meet in San Antonio in April, the orthodontists in Vancouver in June, the periodontists in Boston in September, and the cosmetic academy in Hollywood, Florida, in late March. Hygienists meet in Phoenix in October.

Is there an ADA annual meeting in 2027?

No. SmileCon ended after its October 2025 meeting, and the ADA's future-meetings page now says it has made the decision "to pause its annual meeting, apart from the House of Delegates, until further notice." The only national ADA meeting on the 2027 calendar is the House of Delegates, Oct 29 to Nov 1, 2027, in Denver.

The ADA announced in May 2025 that it "made the difficult decision to sunset SmileCon in 2026 and beyond" (ADA press release, 22 May 2025). Its future meetings page links the pause to a bylaws change that no longer requires an annual scientific session. If your practice used to plan a fall trip around the ADA meeting, the Greater New York Dental Meeting in late November and the state and regional meetings in this calendar are where that CE now has to come from.

How to choose which dental conference to attend

Pick by who is going and why. Doctors earning clinical credit get the most from a large regional meeting near home. Office managers get the most from AADOM. Group leaders get the most from the DSO circuit. If the reason is a software or imaging purchase, choose a meeting with a big exhibit floor and arrive with your shortlist.

Before you book: a planning checklist

• • Confirm the dates and venue on the organizer's own site the week you book, not on a list (including this one).
• • Check whether CE credit is attached to specific courses and how your state board accepts it.
• • Block the schedule early: closing the office for two days affects production more than the registration fee.
• • Book hotels inside the organizer's room block before its cut-off date.
• • Decide who covers the phones, the schedule and emergencies while the team is away.

The IT side: evaluating technology on the exhibit floor

Many practices go to a big meeting to see new practice software, imaging, scanners, phones or AI tools in person. The demo shows the product at its best. The questions below show what it will need from your office, which is where most go-lives slip. Ask them at the booth and get the answers in writing.

What to ask vendors at the booth

• • Does it run in the cloud, on a server in our office, or both, and what are the published system requirements?
• • Which practice software and imaging software does it integrate with, and is the integration an API, a bridge on our server, or a program on every workstation?
• • What internet speed does it need at our busiest hour, and what happens when the connection drops?
• • Will you sign a business associate agreement, and who are your sub-processors?
• • What has to be installed on our computers, and will it survive Windows updates?
• • How do we export our data and remove your software if we leave?
• • Where are backups of our data kept, and can we keep our own air-gapped or offline copy?
• • When it breaks, who do we call, and will your support team work directly with our IT provider?

Then ask your IT provider whether coordinating with that vendor is included in your monthly fee or billed separately, before you sign.

If AI tools are on your list, our roundup of AI tools for dental practices gives each vendor's published BAA wording and IT requirements; if it is a new practice system, start with cloud-based dental practice management software compared. Analytics and patient texting tools are covered in dental practice analytics software and dental patient communication software.

What to set up before the team travels

• • Remote access with multi-factor authentication for anyone who will check the schedule or email from the road, and no saved passwords on shared laptops.
• • Hotel and conference Wi-Fi caution. Use a phone hotspot or the office VPN for anything that touches patient data; never log into practice software over open Wi-Fi.
• • Phones. Set call forwarding or the after-hours greeting before you leave, and test it.
• • Backups. Confirm last night's backup completed before a two- or three-day closure, not after.
• • A contact sheet with your IT provider's helpdesk number taped by the front desk for whoever is minding the office.

Legend Networking is a Dallas-based dental IT company that has served over 3,500 practices since 2004, with 24/7 monitoring and a helpdesk staffed 24/7 at 1-800-794-1588. The author, Ian Lynch, has 22 years in dental IT and oversees the NOC, onsite dispatch and client technology roadmaps. Practices rate the company 4.8 from 173 Google reviews. For what day-to-day support covers, see dental IT support; for how providers compare, see dental IT support companies compared; and see projects we have published.