Schizophrenia research in 2026: report from the annual meeting of the Schizophrenia International Research Society

SIRS 2026, held under the theme “Schizophrenia Research in the Era of Artificial Intelligence,” brought together researchers, clinicians, and persons with lived experience to take stock of a field whose tools for measuring, predicting, and intervening in psychosis have expanded rapidly. Themes spanned artificial intelligence, automated speech analysis, retinal imaging, computational modelling, and novel psychosocial and pharmacological targets, with evidence that, individually, warrants cautious but serious attention and that, collectively, points toward a more mechanistically grounded psychiatry. A recurring call across the meeting was for rigorous external validation, equitable implementation, and sustained scrutiny of underlying assumptions, including whether existing diagnostic categories and treatment targets remain adequate.

Some areas remained underworked relative to their importance, including translating basic neuroscience advances into questions relevant to patients and families, and the structural determinants of illness onset and treatment access. Perhaps the most significant development at SIRS 2026 was not any single scientific finding but the broadening of whose voices and experiences are treated as evidence worth taking seriously in this era of AI, a shift whose consolidation remains a question for the field as much as for any individual programme of work. Stefan Leucht who chaired the program committee for SIRS 2026 alongside Dr.

Lena Palaniyappan, and Dr. Paola Dazzan for offering support for this effort via SIRS Board. Kayla Hill of Parthenon Management for helping coordination of rapporteur assignments.

The editors thank all rapporteurs who contributed session reports for 53 of the 59 programme sessions; proceedings from the remaining six sessions are represented through programme abstracts and publicly available session information. The editors also thank Dr. Fernando Gonzales-Aste, one of the rapporteurs, for coordinating the final round of edits and preparing this report for submission.

This synthesis does not cover all of the activities at SIRS 2026, but only those that were open to rapporteurs. Two SIRS Travel Awardees (Drs. Farah Ghrissi and Mohhadiah Rafique) are gratefully acknowledged for taking part in this exercise.

The views expressed in this report are those of the rapporteurs as synthesised by the editors. AI-assisted rewriting of sentences, word count reduction and stylistic corrections (Claude, Anthropic) was used in drafting this report and checked manually before submission; final editorial responsibility rests with the authors. All rapporteurs received SIRS Travel Award to attend the conference.