Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We are delighted to welcome you to the 12th Annual Meeting of The Lupus Academy,^† which will provide the latest insights into research and clinical practice developments and enrich your knowledge of lupus to support your clinical practice. This year we return to Barcelona, where we held our inaugural meeting over a decade ago in 2011. Since then, there has been an influx of exciting scientific advances in lupus, steadily increasing the Lupus Academy’s educational repository.

The Lupus Academy is committed to the development of high-quality education, focused on providing new and clinically relevant content through in-person and virtual meetings, aspiring to enhance delivery of excellent patient care in support of continuing efforts to improve patient outcomes.

This year’s annual meeting will be complemented by the live online broadcast of selected sessions, as well as catch-up meeting platforms following the meeting. The first part of the meeting will take place online on 1st September 2023, with a 2-hour session focusing on the patient-physician collaboration, aimed to effectively modify disease activity, reduce damage and overall disease burden, and improve treatment outcomes. The main hybrid meeting, which takes place from 8–10th September, consists of a varied and interesting scientific programme designed to share state-of-the-art developments in lupus, stimulate interactive discussions, and reinforce networking among scientists, clinicians, students and other individuals involved in the care of lupus patients. In addition to plenary and workshop sessions, participants will have the opportunity to share their experiences in the Poster, Thieves Market and (new) Lupus Around the World sessions.

Developed by a Steering Committee of 12 international experts in lupus, this year’s meeting programme strives to provide new ideas to enrich your clinical practice, develop and sustain enthusiasm for collaborative research. We look forward to your participation in-person or virtually at the 12th Annual Meeting of the Lupus Academy.

The Lupus Academy Steering Committee

^†The Lupus Academy is a long-term initiative dedicated to improving patient outcomes in SLE through an interactive educational forum dedicated to sharing best clinical practice through the dissemination and discussion of clinical and basic scientific research about SLE and allied diseases.