The 2026 Virginia Search and Rescue Conference will look a little different this year, and we’re excited to share what’s new. It will be on April 16-19 at the Holiday Lake 4H camp.

Due to winter weather cancelling one of our Winter Academy weekends, we will be hosting the second weekend of the Winter Academy during the Conference weekend. Our pre‑conference courses will still be held on Thursday and Friday, but the main conference schedule will shift to focus on breakout sessions on Saturday and Sunday mornings and an integrated full‑scale exercise on Saturday.

Pre‑Conference Courses (Thu–Fri)

We are pleased to offer the following pre‑conference classes:

Canine Tactical Combat Casualty Care-

This course provides working‑dog handlers and SAR personnel with skills to assess, treat, and evacuate injured K9s in high‑risk field environments, blending classroom instruction with practical medical scenarios in the field.

Lost Person Behavior-

A search planning workshop based on established behavioral research that teaches responders how to use lost person profiles and statistics to build effective search strategies, define search areas, and assign tasks during missing person incidents.

Wilderness First Aid-

This course prepares participants to recognize, assess, and manage medical and traumatic emergencies in remote settings, including topics such as hypothermia, wounds, spinal injuries, and evacuation decisions.

CalTopo Mapping-

An operational mapping class focused on building and using CalTopo maps for SAR, including placing markers, drawing lines and polygons, working with map layers, and generating terrain and distance statistics to support planning and field operations.

On Saturday afternoon and evening, participants will also have the opportunity to take part in a full‑scale exercise being conducted as part of the Academy courses. Conference attendees may participate in the exercise as players at the level at which they are credentialed.

Stay tuned for the full schedule and registration details. We look forward to seeing the Virginia SAR community come together again for a weekend of training, collaboration, and networking!