AMA House of Delegates 2026 Annual Meeting in Chicago: Schedule, Elections, and How to Follow It

Why the Annual Meeting Matters More Than the Interim

The AMA House of Delegates meets twice a year, and the difference between the two meetings is not cosmetic. The Annual Meeting in June is where the AMA's primary policy and governance work gets done, the President-Elect election, full Board of Trustees and Council elections, the Speaker and Vice Speaker elections, the bulk of new resolutions filed by the on-time deadline, and the year's headline adopted-policy slate. The Interim Meeting in November is shorter, focused, and reactive, typically used to respond to fast-moving regulatory and legislative developments and to advance policy threads that began at the prior Annual.

If you can only follow one of the two meetings substantively, the Annual is the one. It is the larger chamber-time block, the more contested set of resolutions, and the broader adopted-policy record. The 2026 Annual Meeting is also the cycle in which the AMA chooses the President-Elect who will be sworn in at the 2027 Annual, a choice that signals the AMA's policy direction for the next several years and one that healthcare industry observers, journalists, and patient advocacy organizations all watch closely.

This page is the Chicago-specific deep dive on the 2026 Annual Meeting. For the broader two-meeting overview of resolutions, delegate composition, and the policy issues to watch across both Annual and Interim, see our AMA House of Delegates 2026 dates, resolutions, and policy issues guide.

2026 Annual Meeting: Dates, Venue, and Logistics

• Dates: Friday, June 5, 2026 through Wednesday, June 10, 2026
• Venue: Hyatt Regency Chicago, 150 East Wacker Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60601
• Host city: Chicago, the AMA's headquarters city, where the Annual Meeting has been held consistently for years
• Delegate count: approximately 700 voting delegates, plus alternate delegates and credentialed observers
• On-time resolution deadline: April 21, 2026, noon Central (closed)
• Format: Caucus and section meetings, Opening Session, reference committee hearings, plenary debate, full election cycle, adopted-policy summary
• Official site: ama-assn.org/house-delegates

The Hyatt Regency Chicago is the AMA's traditional Annual Meeting venue. It sits on the north bank of the Chicago River at Wacker and Stetson, two blocks from Michigan Avenue and a fifteen-minute taxi from O'Hare or Midway. The meeting fully occupies the property's convention and ballroom space, with the East Tower and West Tower together providing the largest hotel meeting footprint in the Loop. Delegate room blocks fill early, most state delegations and specialty societies hold rooms under negotiated rates and assign them through their delegation chairs. Observer and industry-stakeholder rooms are generally booked outside the official block.

Day-by-Day Schedule at a Glance

The Annual Meeting follows a consistent six-day rhythm that returning delegates and credentialed observers learn to navigate by feel. The 2026 schedule will track the same arc.

The opening Friday is procedurally light but politically heavy, most candidate-to-delegate conversations and most pre-meeting whip work happens that day. The Sunday and Monday reference committee hearings are where most resolutions get amended, combined, or recommended for referral, and where the actual policy debate is most substantive. The Tuesday election day is the moment most outside coverage focuses on. The Wednesday close is when adopted policy gets read into the record and the meeting's headline outputs become public.

The Reference Committee Structure

The single most important procedural fact about the Annual Meeting is that almost no resolution reaches the floor of the House in the form it was filed. Everything routes first through reference committees, smaller working groups of delegates who hear testimony, evaluate amendments, and recommend action to the full House. There are typically six or seven reference committees at each meeting, organized by subject area:

• Reference Committee on Amendments to Constitution and Bylaws, handles AMA governance changes
• Reference Committee on Medical Practice, covers practice management, payment, and clinical workflow
• Reference Committee on Medical Service, covers payer policy, coverage, and Medicare/Medicaid
• Reference Committee on Legislation, covers federal legislative priorities and advocacy
• Reference Committee on Science and Public Health, covers public health, AI, research, and clinical-evidence policy
• Reference Committee on Medical Education, covers GME, undergraduate medical education, and workforce
• Reference Committee on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, covers professional ethics and the AMA's Code of Medical Ethics

Reference committee hearings are open to credentialed observers, and the testimony heard there is usually the substantive turning point in any contested policy debate. If you are following a specific resolution, yours or someone else's, the reference committee hearing is the room you need to be in, not the plenary. By the time a resolution reaches the floor, the reference committee's recommendation typically determines the outcome.

Elections: What's at Stake in Chicago 2026

The Annual Meeting is the AMA's primary election venue. The 2026 cycle in Chicago will run the full slate:

• AMA President-Elect: elected at Annual, serves as President-Elect for one year, then sworn in as President at the following Annual. The 2026 election will choose the AMA's President for the 2027 to 2028 term.
• AMA Board of Trustees: several seats are contested at each Annual on a rotating schedule. The Board sets AMA strategy between meetings of the House.
• AMA Councils: Council on Medical Service, Council on Medical Education, Council on Science and Public Health, Council on Constitution and Bylaws, Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, Council on Long Range Planning and Development. Council seats are highly contested because Councils draft the reports that frame adopted policy.
• Speaker and Vice Speaker of the House: the procedural leaders of the House of Delegates itself. These are typically multi-year appointments staggered across cycles.

For healthcare industry observers, the President-Elect race is the most consequential signal. The candidates who reach the final ballot represent distinct visions of where the AMA should direct its policy and advocacy energy, Medicare payment reform, prior authorization, AI and augmented intelligence, scope of practice, physician burnout, drug pricing, public health, and equity all compete for limited AMA bandwidth, and the President-Elect's priorities shape that competition for the following year. Following the candidate forums on the Friday before the Saturday Opening Session is the cheapest way to read where each candidate sits on the issues most relevant to your category.

Annual vs Interim: How They Compare

How to Follow HOD 2026 Annual Substantively

Most organizations that pay attention to the Annual Meeting do not send a full team to Chicago. They follow the proceedings through a combination of AMA primary publications and relationships with specific delegations. The pragmatic playbook for HOD 2026 Annual:

1. Download the House of Delegates handbook when it is published in late May. The handbook contains every resolution, every board report, and every council report on the agenda. It is the single highest-leverage document for understanding what the meeting will actually debate.
2. Identify the reference committees relevant to your category. If your interest is payment, Medical Service and Medical Practice carry most of it. If it's AI or evidence policy, Science and Public Health. If it's workforce or training, Medical Education. Pick one to two and read the assigned resolutions in detail.
3. Track Speakers' Updates between now and the meeting. The Speaker and Vice Speaker publish updates that flag procedural changes, key debates, and emerging issues.
4. Subscribe to AMA Morning Rounds and AMA News Wire. Both publish day-of coverage during the meeting that is faster than the formal adopted-policy summaries.
5. Read at least one specialty society HOD recap. Most national specialty societies publish a recap to members within a week of the meeting close. These recaps reveal what mattered to that delegation in ways the AMA's neutral summary does not.
6. Read the adopted-policy summary published after Wednesday's close. This is the formal record of what the 2026 Annual produced.
7. Follow JAMA Network commentary. JAMA and the JAMA Network journals publish HOD-adjacent commentary and research that frames the policy debate in clinical evidence, useful for understanding why a given position carried the day.

What This Means for Healthcare Companies

The Annual Meeting is not a trade show. There is no exhibit hall, no booth program, no badge-scan lead-capture motion. The companies that derive real value from the Annual Meeting are the ones that have built genuine policy and evidence relationships with the delegations whose specialty or geography overlaps their category, and they treat the meeting as a moment in a twelve-month policy cycle, not a self-contained event.

The investments that actually matter for HOD 2026 Annual are the ones that compound year over year: the AMA corporate roundtable for AMA leadership access, AMA Foundation support aligned with your therapeutic area, peer-reviewed evidence published in JAMA family journals that gets cited in reference committee testimony, hosted dinners and receptions for the state and specialty society delegations most relevant to your category, and sustained thought-leadership content on the issues delegates are debating. The marketing-side playbook for all of this is laid out in detail in our companion AMA HOD 2026 marketing guide, which covers the specific engagement vehicles, sponsorship economics, and evidence-publication discipline that work at HOD.

The broader pattern, engaging with the physician organizations that shape category adoption rather than chasing booth leads, is the same one we apply to KOL programs, conference ROI modeling, primary care physician marketing, and the rest of the medical conference playbook. AMA HOD 2026 Annual in Chicago is the highest-leverage instance of that pattern this year. The brands that show up in Chicago with a policy posture rather than a marketing posture are the ones that get to participate in the debate rather than react to its outcomes.

That posture has to be built before the meeting. By June 5, the resolution slate is fixed, the reference committee assignments are set, the candidate forums are scheduled, and the delegations have already decided how they intend to vote on the issues they care about most. The companies that have done the year's work by then have something to say. The ones that haven't are observers.