The 35th Alzheimer Europe Conference (#35AEC) “Connecting Science and Communities: The future of dementia care” took place at the Bologna Congress Center between 6 and 8 October 2025, attracting over 1,500 delegates from across Italy, Europe and beyond, with 48 countries represented. On the agenda were over 800 presenters (369 presenters for oral and quick oral presentations, and 495 poster presentations), who shared their research, knowledge and experience in an atmosphere of true collaboration and solidarity.
Opening Ceremony
Maria do Rosário Zincke dos Reis, Chairperson of Alzheimer Europe, addressed delegates at the Opening Ceremony, welcoming a record-breaking number of over 1,500 delegates.
She highlighted the exciting and varied conference programme created in collaboration with Alzheimer Europe’s co-hosts, Federazione Alzheimer Italia and Alzheimer Uniti Italia, sharing her delight that the Alzheimer Europe Conference continues to grow in popularity and to provide such an engaging forum for sharing knowledge and for networking, bringing together people living with dementia and their families, carers and supporters, as well as volunteers and staff of Alzheimer associations, policymakers, health and social care professionals, researchers, academics and industry representatives. She also extended a special welcome to the 48 people with dementia and 43 carers and supporters in the audience, emphasising the importance, for her, of “listening to and learning from people with dementia and carers”.
Mario Possenti, Vice-Chairperson of Alzheimer Europe and Secretary General of Federazione Alzheimer Italia presented the medal of the President of the Republic to the Conference. This is a token of appreciation from the President, and it was awarded to the Conference for its value. He then read out some welcome words provided by Professor Orazio Schillaci, Italian Minister of Health.
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Giovanni Gordini, Councillor, and Vice President of Commission IV “Health and Social Policies” welcomed delegates to the Emilia-Romagna Region and Roberta Toschi, Bologna City Councillor responsible for Disability and Chair of the Fifth Council Committee – Health, Welfare, Family, Community, welcomed everyone to the city of Bologna. Both speakers’ words were delivered in Italian and translated by Clelia d’Anastasio from Alzheimer Uniti Italia.
Plenary 1: Dementia as a European and national policy and research priority – as seen by people with dementia and their carers
People with lived experience of dementia are Alzheimer Europe’s most important focus, both at the organisation’s annual conferences and in all aspects of their work. The organisation was proud that the first conference plenary session was entirely organised, moderated and presented by people with lived experience, as has been the case at each of their annual conferences since Helsinki 2023.
The first Plenary was a joint session organised by members of the European Working Group of People with Dementia (EWGPWD) and the European Dementia Carers Working Group (EDCWG), who gave their perspectives on dementia as a European and national policy and research priority, as people with lived experience of dementia. The session was moderated by Trevor Salomon, Chairperson of the EDCWG, from the UK. He welcomed the audience and introduced himself, sharing some of his family background and experience as a carer for his wife, Yvonne.
The first speaker was Kevin Quaid, Chairperson of the EWGPWD, from Ireland, whose talk discussed the Helsinki Manifesto, adopted by Alzheimer Europe at its 2023 Annual General Meeting in Helsinki, Finland, and which addresses key areas impacting people with dementia, their families and carers, including health, research, disability and social rights, and support for informal carers.
The second speaker was Annick Germeys, member of the EDCWG, from Belgium. She is a mother of two children and wife to Geert. She is also a board member and member of the carers working group of Alzheimer Liga Vlaanderen. She shared her perspective as a carer for Geert, who was diagnosed with young-onset Alzheimer’s disease in 2022 at the age of 53. Her talk explored how technology could become a true partner in dementia care.
Gerda Van Tongerloo, Vice-Chairperson of the EWGPWD gave a talk titled “In the Silence of the Symptoms, hear the Echo of a Soul…” stressing the urgent need for respectful communication about dementia and people with dementia, as highlighted in the guidelines on respectful and inclusive communication developed by the EWGPWD together with the EDCWG.
The fourth and final speaker in this plenary session was Roslynn Vella, Vice-Chairperson of the EDCWG, from Malta, who spoke about “The Caregiver’s Compass: Navigating policy to achieve patient-centred palliative care in dementia”.
Other plenary sessions
On 7 October, Plenary 2 on “Gender and sexuality in dementia care” was moderated by Marjolein de Vugt, Netherlands, and featured presentations from Maria Teresa Ferretti, who gave a talk on “Sex and gender differences in Alzheimer’s research”, Ingrid Hellström, who discussed “Gender in caregiving – barriers for male carers of people with dementia”, Martina Roes, whose talk was titled “To better understand the experiences and unmet needs of LGBTQ+ people with dementia within the health care system – preliminary results from an intersectional analysis”, and Diego De Leo who presented “Gender as a factor in mental health and depression in old age care”.
Plenary 3 focused on preparing for new Alzheimer’s disease (AD) treatments and took the form of a roundtable discussion, moderated by Angela Bradshaw, Director for Research at Alzheimer Europe. The panel included Joanne Pike, Alzheimer’s Association (USA), Sabina Capellari, University of Bologna (Italy), Lutz Frölich, Central Institute for Mental Health, Mannheim (Germany), and Marco Bozzali, University of Turin (Italy).
On 8 October, the fourth plenary looked at some of the less common types of dementia (i.e. not Alzheimer’s dementia), with talks by Yolande Pijnenburg (Netherlands) who focused on “Improving the diagnosis and treatment of fronto-temporal dementia”, Rejko Krueger (Luxembourg), who discussed genetic risk factors – in particular in relation to Lewy Body Dementia, Parkinson’s disease, but also AD – Piero Parchi (Italy), whose talk was titled “Are prion diseases the forgotten dementias? An update on their prevalence and diagnosis”, and Claire Fyvie (United Kingdom – Scotland) who discussed Childhood Dementia and shared her personal experience of this with her own son.
Keynote lectures
The first of two keynote lectures on the conference agenda was titled “The great debate in diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease: More than just a β test” and was delivered by Nicolas Villain. He emphasised that prognosis in cognitively unimpaired biomarker-positive individuals is heterogeneous, noting that most remain asymptomatic for years, whereas those with extended tau neuropathological changes in the neocortex confer very high short-term risk (~80% to mild cognitive impairment by six years; ~46% to dementia).
“Alzheimer’s disease should remain a clinical–biological diagnosis anchored to symptoms or demonstrably very-high risk”, he stated, emphasizing that “switching to a purely biological definition denotes a different entity with different implications for patients, trials, and policy”.
Semantics, he concluded, “carry clinical and public-health weight, with a ‘biology-only’ label having the potential to inflating prevalence, magnify misdiagnosis and inequities, and enable approvals without proven clinical benefit—especially in asymptomatic populations.”
The second keynote lecture of the conference was delivered by Marco Trabucchi (Italy), whose talk explored some of the next steps in dementia diagnosis and treatment. He began by stressing the importance of approaching the future of dementia care with optimism. “Patients do not need pessimism”, he emphasised, but rather they need “a strong, generous engagement by researchers, doctors and psychosocial operators to improve the quality of their life, overcoming enormous amounts of interfering events.”
People affected by dementia and their families are waiting anxiously and are holding out hope for any possible new approach to their clinical, psychological and social needs, he said. Indeed, he continued “they are paying great attention to the rate of progress in the various fields and are not willing to forgive any kind of delay due to inadequate focus on goals connected with a positive outcome for diagnostic procedures and therapeutic approaches.” It is therefore vital that research must consider that the progress in dementia “cannot be built on isolated pillars” and that scientific breakthroughs “must be translated into meaningful care”, he insisted. He also noted that communities should be strengthened through greater knowledge and support, while policies need to ensure access and fairness. And guiding all of this, he said, must be the lived experience of people affected by dementia.
In closing, he said “connecting science, medicine and communities is not just a theme, but a commitment to integration, collaboration and humanity.”
Next year…Dublin!
At the closing ceremony of the conference, Andy Heffernan, Chief Executive of the Alzheimer Society of Ireland took to the stage to invite delegates to the 36th Alzheimer Europe Conference, “Sláinte: Building momentum in dementia through policy, research and partnership”, taking place in Dublin, Ireland, from 27-29 October 2026. Save the dates!
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