Annual Meeting FAQ

The 137th Annual Meeting will take place October 18–21, 2025, in Atlanta, Georgia with the Virtual Meeting sessions taking place November 12–14, 2025. The Meeting includes live-streamed events, and recordings after the fact.

As always we work to have sessions and events that foster interactive participation, broad engagement, and a cohesive thematic experience for both new and seasoned AFS conference attendees at the 2025 annual meeting.

A large portion of the program will, as always, depend on the proposals or presentations and events that are submitted by participants. If there is something you’d like to see, help us make it happen! Contact us at annualmeeting@afsnet.org if you’d like to discuss options.

The preliminary program will be posted by late June. Presenters will have at least two weeks from the day the preliminary program is posted to request corrections or changes. A revised schedule of concurrent sessions should be available in August, though additional information about events may continue to emerge through September.

We found that 90-minute session blocks worked well over the past several years to give attendees an opportunity to mingle and network between sessions.

As in past years, 90-minute sessions are the default in 2025, because the shorter session block will give us much greater flexibility in scheduling our long conference days. We may be able to avoid scheduling so many sessions at one time, or even find a way to start later than 8:00 am — both are dreams that are hard to realize given our usual scheduling pressures.

Session chairs can request a 120-minute session when they submit their session proposal, but this amount of time is not guaranteed.

We will monitor the situation so that our policies can best address the conditions that face us in the fall. AFS and the conference hotel are prepared to implement preventative measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Specifically, AFS will follow local and national public health regulations concerning masking and capacity limits within the conference venue. AFS will not conduct health checks or screenings.

We will update the section on “COVID-19 Risk” in our Annual Meeting Policies as required by circumstances. Contact us at annualmeeting@afsnet.org for questions.

The link to register will be posted on the Registration page and advertised in the AFS News and social media when it is released.

You can find 2025 registration rates on the Registration page.

Registration revenue is essential but not sufficient to cover the cost of our annual meeting, just as membership revenue is necessary but not enough to cover our wide range of activities throughout the year. 

We are grateful to all those who can support AFS at one of our membership and registration tiers.

Please Note: the Call for Proposals requires Proposal Registration.  There is no fee for this initial step, and remains separate from the long-standing fee-based registration that opens in late April/early May.

Yes, the American Folklore Society is committed to making participation in AFS and the AFS annual meeting as widely accessible as possible.

If financial hardship will prevent you from participating in this year’s meeting, we invite you to apply for financial support through April 1, 2025. In addition, there are a number of stipends, most often supported by AFS Sections, which offer support for participants doing work in specific areas.

The proposal submission portal closes April 1.

See how to submit a proposal.

Please also Review the FAQ for Proposal Submissions and using the online platform.

Thanks for considering this! Donations to the Sustainers’ Fund will help subsidize participation in the annual meeting by those who would otherwise not be able to attend.

Contact us at annualmeeting@afsnet.org for more information.