The 2026 ARLE/IFTE Biennial Conference will take place at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), marking the 15th ARLE Conference and the 15th IFTE Conference. Academic sessions will be held at the UAB Faculty of Arts and Humanities, located on the picturesque Bellaterra campus, and in central Barcelona at the Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Faculty of Geography/Psychology. The main conference will run from June 25 to 27, 2026, with a dedicated PhD pre-conference day on June 24.

ARLE Conference Chair Associate Professor Xavier Fontich, IFTE President Professor Andy Goodwyn, and their colleagues warmly invite you to join them in Barcelona—an extraordinary, cosmopolitan, and dynamic city.

This unique joint international conference will gather educators from around the globe to celebrate achievements, address shared challenges, and honour the legacy of Lev Vygotsky on the 130th anniversary of his birth.

ARLE and IFTE bring different formative names to the conference. L1 is ‘First Language’; English can be referred to as ‘English in Education’ or ‘English Language Arts’. In the not-too-distant past, terms such as "mother tongue" or "native language" were commonly used. 

This list tells us we are moving forward and challenging our semantic histories. We are united in our purpose to celebrate the value and significance of our field and its ongoing, emancipatory research. In the following text, we use L1 for simplicity.

Conference Theme: The Unbounded Journey - First Language and Literature Education in a Dynamic World

Post-pandemic and amidst the increasingly ubiquitous presence of AI in education, the conference will draw attention to access, language, relationality, and technology in L1 Education globally. The conference theme invites participants to consider the role and concepts of place (and displacement), storytelling, technologies, diversities, identities and agency in L1 research and practice.

Conference Format: Hybrid Asynchronous

The Conference aspires to bring participants together in person. However, given the challenges we are all facing in reducing our carbon footprint, the ARLE-Barcelona 2026 conference will run in a hybrid format, allowing participants who cannot travel to Barcelona to present in a virtual, asynchronous mode.

The virtual asynchronous mode entails that participants will have their contributions (which may include symposia, paper presentations, or posters) allocated on a platform accessible by all delegates (both online and on-site) throughout the conference. Those interested will be able to provide comments, which the authors will address in response.

Online participants will be able to attend all communications and keynote sessions via live streaming. So far, we have been unable to include the corridor conversations and the gala dinner in the streaming experience. We apologise!

Conference Language: 

Main Language: English
Additional Languages: Spanish, Catalan, and French

The official language of the conference will be English. It will be used for the opening and closing keynote lectures, as well as in most parallel sessions, symposia, posters, and communication with the organizers.

However, in keeping with the inclusive and multilingual spirit that characterizes both ARLE and IFTE, the conference will also include three additional languages:

• Spanish: As the primary additional language, it will be used in selected parallel keynote lectures, communication sessions, and symposia.

• French: Will be used in communication sessions and symposia.

• Catalan: Will be used in communication sessions and symposia, and will also serve as the main language for the local event aimed at teachers, held on Friday and Saturday mornings. This event will include simultaneous translation into English.