The 7th European Conference on Process Analytics and Control Technology - EuroPACT - runs 4-7 May 2026 at the Cite Centre de Congres in Lyon, France. DECHEMA e.V. is the organiser, with conference chairs Martin Jager of Hochschule Niederrhein and David Littlejohn of the University of Strathclyde and CPACT in Glasgow. EuroPACT is one of the two events in the year that draws a concentrated European process-analytics audience out of the trade-fair traffic and into a room full of PAT-specific talks. The other, analytica in Munich, closed in March with a very different mix: five halls of laboratory hardware in which inline analyzers were a modest slice. Lyon in May will be the inverse - a smaller footprint entirely dedicated to the topic.

This preview covers what has been published so far by the organiser: the three scientific pillars, the four confirmed plenaries, the special focus areas, and the sponsor list as it stands. Program details published later - the full parallel-session schedule, the workshop line-up, and the exhibitor floor plan - will be covered in a program-drop update closer to the event.

Three scientific pillars

DECHEMA has organised the technical program around three pillars, published verbatim on the conference site:

  1. Process Analytics for Value Creation in Real-World Applications - the industrial-implementation track. Case content from operators rather than method development for its own sake.
  2. From Data to Process Insight, Automation, Control and Optimization - the data and control-loop track. Chemometrics, soft sensors, model lifecycle, feedback control that closes on analyzer output.
  3. Novel PAT and Instrumental Technologies - the hardware and new-method track. New probe designs, new spectral bands, new sampling geometries, new detectors.

Two special focus areas cut across all three pillars: integrated AI and process intensification for sustainability. The AI theme mirrors what the analytica floor was pushing in March; the intensification-for-sustainability angle is where PAT ties into the continuous-manufacturing and decarbonisation narratives that regulators and site engineering leads are both under pressure to answer.

Four confirmed plenaries

Four plenary lectures are listed on the site as of publication:

  • Marion O’Farrell (SINTEF, Norway) - opening lecture on subsurface near-infrared sensing for food processing. SINTEF has been publishing on inline NIR for food and biobased streams for years, and putting a food-industry plenary in the opening slot signals that the food and biobased track will not be an afterthought at this edition.
  • John Mack (Applied Materials / APG Pharma, UK) - biopharmaceutical process development using hybrid modeling. Hybrid models - mechanistic backbones with data-driven residual terms - are the pattern regulators have signalled they will accept more readily than pure black-box neural approaches, so this one lands in the middle of an active discussion.
  • Mathieu Cura (Optimistik, France) - AI and PAT for batch process optimization.
  • Nadege Brun (TotalEnergies, France) - PAT integration in a greenhouse-gas reduction strategy. An operator-side plenary from a European majors is the kind of talk that gives the conference its “value creation” claim some substance.

The chair line-up itself is notable. Littlejohn was one of the founding voices of the UK’s CPACT consortium, and CPACT has long been the connective tissue between UK academic PAT and industrial deployment. Jager brings the German applied-sciences side. That combination has shaped previous EuroPACT editions and it will likely shape the parallel-session selection here too.

What the audience will look like

Historically EuroPACT is a working conference more than a badge-collecting one - it draws PAT engineers, chemometricians, and instrument specialists in similar proportions rather than being dominated by any one of them. Vendor presence is real but not overwhelming: current sponsors listed on the DECHEMA page include Bruker Optics, Endress+Hauser, and Metrohm at the top tiers, with additional exhibitors expected. Attendees who came out of analytica saying the inline-process floor felt thin will find the density inverted here. For readers weighing whether to send someone, the pattern to watch is the parallel-session titles once published: inline Raman, inline NIR, and chemometrics tracks have historically been the most subscribed rooms.

Deadlines and what has not been published

Abstract-submission and registration deadlines are not published on the conference page at the time of writing. The DECHEMA Converia platform is the official channel for the online program once released. Prospective attendees who want to submit a poster or a talk should use the organiser’s site as the authoritative source rather than any of the third-party listings that have republished the event details.

Spectrane will publish a program update once the full technical schedule and any workshops are released, and a recap after the event covering the plenaries, the paper-award recipients, and the exhibitor floor.