4^th ICPCN International Conference on Children's Palliative Care

Welcome to the 4th ICPCN International Conference on Children’s Palliative Care.

During this 20th anniversary year, we are excited to be partnering with The Ruth Foundation to bring you our 4th international conference on children’s palliative care, taking place in the vibrant city of Manila in the Philippines from 12th to 15th November 2025. 

Our 2025 theme is ‘Milestones and Horizons’, signifying the huge strides that have been made in the development of children’s palliative care around the world in the last 20 years, but also the need to keep our focus on the horizon and what we need to do to make quality children’s palliative care accessible for all the world’s 21 million children living with life-limiting or life-threatening conditions. 

2024 marked the 10-year anniversary of the World Health Assembly Resolution on palliative care – a landmark statement which called on Member States to improve access to palliative care as a core component of health systems and universal health coverage, with an emphasis on primary health care and community/ home-based care.  We want to take time to consider how far we have come since this resolution on palliative care, celebrating success whilst recognising how far we still have to travel.  We want to shine a light on how this impacts on the real lives and illness experiences of children and families around the world.

Celebrating 20 years is an amazing milestone for ICPCN and we want to share some of the achievements we’ve made along the way. We also want to celebrate your achievements in your work with life-limited children. I hope you can join us to celebrate our birthday in style.

We will have a varied programme of keynote presentations, parallel sessions and posters, as well as pre-conference workshops. Delegates will also be invited to join us in celebrating this wonderful achievement at a gala dinner on the Friday night.   This Conference will be a great opportunity to showcase your work and innovations in children’s palliative care and to hear about the inspiring work of our partners in the Philippines and surrounding countries.  

Abstract submission will open on the 1 April along with registration, and we encourage you all to submit an abstract to share your work with the worldwide children’s palliative care community – without you there will be no conference, so we look forward to receiving your submissions. 

Early bird bookings are open until 31 August 2025 so do take advantage of this special rate and book early.

We look forward to welcoming you to Manila. 

Prof. Julia Downing
Conference Chair
Chief Executive – ICPCN