The SITC 2026 Annual Meeting runs 4–8 November 2026 at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona.
This is a practical guide to the official poster and presentation rules for the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer's 41st Annual Meeting: the poster size and format, the ePoster requirement and its October 23 upload deadline, oral and rapid-oral time limits, where accepted abstracts are published in JITC, and the immuno-oncology figures that make a poster or slide worth stopping for. Every date and specification below links to official SITC materials.
Transparency note: Illustrations in this article were generated with SciFig AI and reviewed by the author for scientific accuracy. Factual claims about dates and specifications link to official SITC materials.
1. SITC 2026 at a Glance: Dates, Venue, and Key Deadlines
The SITC 2026 Annual Meeting runs 4–8 November 2026 at the Phoenix Convention Center, Phoenix, Arizona (Mountain Time), and every accepted abstract must also be submitted as an ePoster by 23 October 2026. Regular and Early Career Investigator (ECI) Award abstract notifications are sent on 31 July 2026; late-breaking abstract (clinical only) notifications follow on 28 September 2026. Because the presenting author must register for the meeting themselves — abstract presenters do not receive complimentary registration — it is worth mapping the full SITC 2026 timeline early.
Here is the SITC 2026 poster and presentation timeline that matters, drawn from the official SITC 2026 abstract dates and presenter guidelines. For the session-by-session programme, SITC posts the SITC 2026 schedule online.
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 25 June 2026 | Regular / ECI Award abstract submission closed (5 p.m. PT) |
| 15 July 2026 | Late-breaking abstract (LBA) submission site opened |
| 31 July 2026 | Regular / ECI Award abstract notifications sent |
| 7 August 2026 | Regular presentation acceptance / withdrawal confirmation deadline |
| 10 September 2026 | Late-breaking abstract submission closes (5 p.m. PT) |
| 28 September 2026 | Late-breaking abstract notifications sent |
| 2 October 2026 | Abstract title and author information released |
| 23 October 2026 | ePoster upload deadline (mandatory for all accepted abstracts) |
| 3 November 2026 | Embargo lifts; full abstracts made public |
| 4–8 November 2026 | SITC 2026 Annual Meeting, Phoenix Convention Center |
| February 2027 | Final abstract supplement published in JITC |
A registration note: submitting an abstract does not register you for the meeting. Every presenting author is responsible for their own registration and housing, so register for SITC 2026 once you have confirmed your presentation.
2. SITC 2026 Poster Size, Format, and Guidelines (Official Specs)
A SITC 2026 poster has a maximum size of 8 × 4 ft in landscape (horizontal) orientation — about 244 × 122 cm — and any smaller dimensions within that limit are acceptable. Posters hang in the Poster Hall (Exhibit Halls AB), with odd-numbered posters presenting Friday 6 November and even-numbered posters Saturday 7 November. Author presence is required during the assigned lunch and evening reception hours. Importantly, SITC does not print posters for authors and offers no on-site printing, so plan your printing and shipping before you travel.
These SITC 2026 poster size and format rules come straight from the official SITC 2026 presenter guidelines. A few points shape how you build the sheet:
- Landscape 8 × 4 ft maximum — design to this wide ratio from the start; a portrait layout will not make good use of the board.
- Bring your printed poster with you — there is no on-site printing service, and lost or delayed shipping has no fallback.
- Show your abstract number — every accepted abstract receives a number (used both in the JITC publication and as your poster number), so place it clearly.
- Readable from a distance — the Poster Hall is busy during receptions; high contrast and a clear visual hierarchy get your poster read.
The immuno-oncology figures on a SITC poster — checkpoint mechanism, CAR-T design, tumor immune microenvironment (TME) — are the slowest part of that layout to produce. You can generate publication-grade versions online for free and drop them straight into your PowerPoint composition.
Need a hero figure for your SITC poster?
Start from a checkpoint mechanism, CAR-T schematic, or pathway visual before you open PowerPoint.
Explore the Tool3. SITC 2026 ePoster: Requirements and the October 23 Deadline
Every author with an accepted SITC 2026 abstract is required to submit an ePoster, uploaded through the Speaker Center by 23 October 2026. The ePoster is available to meeting participants on the virtual platform from 6 November 2026 (9 a.m. MT) through 7 January 2027, where they can view and download it. This requirement applies to Regular, ECI Award, and late-breaking abstract presenters alike — the ePoster is not optional, even if you also display a printed poster in Phoenix.
The full ePoster requirements are in the official SITC 2026 presenter guidelines, with the exact file specifications provided inside each presenting author's Speaker Center. Because an ePoster is viewed and downloaded on screens rather than read from a meter away, crisp vector-style figures read far better than photographed or low-resolution images — a mechanism diagram exported cleanly stays legible when a delegate zooms in on their laptop.
4. SITC 2026 Oral and Short Talk: Slides and Time Limits
If your abstract is selected for an oral presentation, the exact length and format arrive in your acceptance notification — but standard SITC oral slots are 15 minutes total (10–12 minutes of talk plus 3–5 minutes of Q&A) or 10 minutes total (8 minutes plus 2 minutes Q&A), while rapid oral abstracts run 5–8 minutes. Rapid oral sessions are held during lunch (12:30–1:30 p.m. MT) on 6 and 7 November, split into concurrent basic-science and clinical tracks. Four ECI Award abstracts are additionally selected as Presidential Travel Award winners and present in the Presidential Session on Sunday 7 November.
For a SITC 2026 oral presentation, presenters are added to the SITC Speaker Center after confirming participation and must submit a Conflict of Interest disclosure form, a recording permission form, a headshot, and their presentation slides before the meeting. As of 20 July 2026, SITC had not published a required slide aspect ratio or an official slide template — those specifications are "provided in the abstract notifications," so confirm them there rather than assuming a 16:9 template. What does not change is the visual demand: a 5–8 minute rapid oral gives you time for a handful of slides, so nearly every SITC presentation slide needs one clear figure — a mechanism schematic, a trial design, a pathway — doing the explaining rather than a wall of text.
5. What Figures Do You Need? Poster, Presentation, and Abstract
Whether you are building a poster, oral slides, or the abstract itself, SITC's immunotherapy audience expects the same handful of scientific figures — and the most time-consuming ones can be generated online for free in minutes. The exact mix depends on your track (checkpoint blockade, cell therapy, TCR/neoantigen, bispecifics, oncolytic virus, and so on), but three distinct jobs recur across the meeting.
On your poster and ePoster, the recurring immuno-oncology figure types are:
- Immune checkpoint mechanism of action (MOA) — PD-1/PD-L1 or CTLA-4 blockade and the T-cell response it restores. The figure that decides whether your poster gets read.
- CAR-T / adoptive cell therapy — the CAR construct, antigen recognition, and tumor-cell killing. Central to the meeting's large cell-therapy track.
- Tumor immune microenvironment (TME) — the T-cell landscape, tumor-associated macrophages, and suppressive signaling your study intervenes on.
- Signaling pathway or trial schema — the specific cascade or study design behind your data, drawn with publication-grade clarity.
On your slides, an oral or rapid-oral presenter needs one clean figure per slide — usually the single mechanism or trial-design figure that carries the talk.
In your abstract itself, SITC permits up to two figures, tables, or images (minimum 300 dpi, 600 preferred) that do not count against the 400-word limit — and because accepted abstracts are published in JITC, that figure becomes part of the permanent, citable record. A clean mechanism schematic or trial schema in the abstract is a genuine, and often overlooked, place to make your science legible before the reader ever reaches your poster.
Each of these historically takes hours in Adobe Illustrator. You can generate them from a text prompt or turn your accepted abstract PDF into a starter figure instead, then refine and export.
Turn your abstract into a checkpoint or CAR-T diagram
Paste your study mechanism or design and generate a clean figure you can refine for poster, slide, or abstract.
Try Free6. Designing a Winning SITC Poster: Accuracy That Survives Peer Scrutiny
A winning SITC poster passes two tests: it is grasped in three seconds by a delegate walking past, and it is scientifically exact enough to survive scrutiny from an immunologist standing in front of it. The best layouts are built around one dominant "hero" figure — usually the checkpoint MOA or the CAR-T mechanism with the key result nearby — with everything else arranged to support it. A landscape 8 × 4 ft sheet with one strong figure beats a dense grid of small panels every time.
The second test is where scientific figures live or die — and where general-purpose AI image generators fall short. A tool like Nano Banana Pro or GPT Image can produce something that looks about 99% right, but on a scientific figure 99% right is effectively 0% right: a single reversed receptor, a mislabeled cell, or a wrong domain order turns a compelling poster into one that misleads a reviewer. And a flat, raster AI image gives you no way to fix that last one percent.
This is the core difference with SciFig. Every figure is a fully editable SVG whose elements — arrows, labels, receptors, cells — you can correct individually, so you (the author who actually knows the biology) close the gap to 100% and sign off on the science. That author-in-the-loop, element-level editing is what separates a publication-grade figure from a plausible-looking one. The immuno-oncology figures that reward this care are exactly the ones reviewers scrutinize:
- Checkpoint MOA — put PD-1 on the T cell and PD-L1 on the tumor cell (a commonly reversed pairing), and show blockade restoring T-cell activation rather than inventing it.
- CAR-T construct — get the domain order right (scFv, hinge, transmembrane, costimulatory, CD3ζ); a garbled construct is the detail a cell-therapy reviewer notices first.
- Tumor immune microenvironment (TME) — distinguish cell types and macrophage polarization (M1 vs M2) correctly rather than inventing immune cell states that do not exist.
Whether your SITC 2026 poster earns its attention comes down to whether these figures are accurate, clear, and legible — which is exactly where an editable AI figure workflow compresses days of design work into hours without giving up scientific control.
7. Create Your SITC 2026 Figures with AI: The SciFig Workflow
You already have two things most colleagues do not: your accepted abstract and a clear understanding of your study's mechanism — use both to generate your figures online for free, then edit them to exactly right. Here is the SciFig workflow for a SITC presenter:
Path 1 — Upload your accepted abstract PDF. Drop it into PDF-to-Figure. It parses your Background, Methods, and Results and returns a starter mechanism diagram or trial schema in one click — you begin refining from a 70%-there draft, not a blank canvas.
Path 2 — Copy a structured prompt. For a mechanism or pathway figure, Text-to-Figure gives more control. Copy and adjust to your study:
Schematic of immune checkpoint blockade: a T cell displaying PD-1
binds a tumor cell expressing PD-L1, an anti-PD-1 antibody blocks the
interaction, restoring T-cell receptor signaling, cytokine release,
and cytotoxic killing of the tumor cell.
Path 3 — Sketch and scan. If you sketched your hero figure on paper, photograph it and drop it into Sketch-to-Figure to get a publication-style version that preserves your topology.
From any path, you edit individual elements in the vector canvas — adjust labels, colors, receptor placement — and export to editable PPTX or layered SVG for final composition, at high resolution for the 8 × 4 ft print without artifacting. A new SciFig account starts with 150 starter credits plus 50 refill credits every day, which covers a full set of poster figures for most authors. For the companion guides in this conference series, see the ESMO 2026 poster guide and the EHA 2026 poster guide.
Start your SITC figure from prompt, PDF, or sketch
Use the path that matches what you already have, then edit every element until the science is exact.
Try Free8. SITC 2026 Presenter Disclosure and FCOI Rules
Every SITC presenter must complete a Conflict of Interest disclosure, and financial relationships are governed by SITC's Financial Conflicts of Interest (FCOI) policy — so plan your disclosures alongside your figures, not after. Presenting authors submit a COI disclosure form through the Speaker Center, and your poster and slides should carry the disclosure statement those forms require. This applies to oral, rapid-oral, and poster presenters alike.
Handle the disclosure step early, because it gates your Speaker Center submissions and it belongs on the poster itself. For the exact requirements, check the official SITC 2026 abstract policies, and when your disclosures are settled, the science on the sheet — the figures — is where your preparation time is best spent.
Tip
The single highest-leverage decision in your preparation window is which figure becomes the hero. Pick the one your delegates need to remember 24 hours later — usually the checkpoint MOA or the CAR-T mechanism with the key result nearby — and design the rest of the 8 × 4 ft sheet around it.
9. Where SITC 2026 Abstracts Are Published (JITC)
Accepted SITC 2026 abstracts are published in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer (JITC) — SITC's official open-access journal — as a dedicated abstract supplement, with the final supplement published in February 2027. Abstract titles and author information are released online on 2 October 2026, and the embargo lifts with full abstracts made public on 3 November 2026, just before the meeting opens. Searches for the "SITC 2026 abstracts" or "SITC abstract PDF" almost always mean this JITC supplement.
Because your abstract — and its up-to-two figures — becomes part of this citable JITC record, it is worth making sure the figure in your abstract, on your poster, and on your slides all tell the same study story. Once the supplement is live, use it to confirm the citable version of your SITC abstract, then keep every figure consistent across formats.
FAQ
References
All specifications and dates above are drawn from official SITC materials, accessed July 20, 2026:
- Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer. SITC 2026 Annual Meeting — Home. sitcancer.org. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.sitcancer.org/2026/home
- Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer. SITC 2026 Abstract Dates. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.sitcancer.org/2026/abstracts/abstract-submission/abstract-dates
- Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer. SITC 2026 Abstract Submission Guidelines. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.sitcancer.org/2026/abstracts/abstract-submission/abstract-guidelines
- Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer. SITC 2026 Presenter Information (Poster & Oral Guidelines). Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.sitcancer.org/2026/abstracts/abstract-presentation/sitc26-presenter-guidelines
- Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer. SITC 2026 Abstract Policies. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.sitcancer.org/2026/abstracts/abstract-submission/abstractpolicies
- Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer. SITC 2026 Registration. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.sitcancer.org/2026/attendee-resources/registration
- Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer (JITC). BMJ / Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.sitcancer.org/jitc
Disclaimer: This article is educational content focused on scientific figure design for conference posters and presentations. It is not medical advice and should not be used for clinical decisions. Dates and specifications are summarized from official SITC materials linked above and were accurate at the time of writing; always confirm current details on the official SITC website before printing or submitting. SciFig is a scientific illustration tool — it does not diagnose, treat, or advise on patient care.
