Registration Now Open!
We look forward to welcoming you to this five-day event, March 27–31, 2026 at the Charlotte Convention Center, where the orthopaedic community comes together for research, workshops, networking, and more! You can register for the event below. You can also sign up to become a member, or renew your membership as part of the registration process.
Early Bird Registration Rates End January 31, 2026 at 11:59 PM Central.
| ORS Member Registration Type | Early Registration Rate | Registration Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Student Undergraduate, Graduate, Medical, or MD/PhD Students | $350 | $475 |
| Post Graduate Trainee Post-Doc, Resident, or Fellow | $400 | $525 |
| Affiliate Academic staff technicians, lab managers or others with similar roles | $755 | $1080 |
| Early Career Assistant professor, instructor, or lecturer (excluding clinicians and surgeons), or an early-career professional with less than 10 years of experience in their field. | $755 | $1080 |
| Established Membership includes Academic Faculty (associate professors, professors, orthopaedic surgeons, and clinicians). It also extends to professionals in the industry and private sector (such as engineers, scientists, research staff, directors, administrators, and managers), as well as those working in government (administrators, directors, engineers, scientists, and research staff) and in private practice (clinicians and orthopaedic surgeons). This category also applies to individuals with more than 10 years of experience in their career field. | $785 | $1110 |
| Emeritus Current ORS members aged 65 or older, who have maintained at least 15 consecutive years of membership, and are now retired. | $200 | $250 |
Refunds cannot be granted for any updates in membership status after the time of initial registration.
| Non-Member Registration Type | Early Registration Rate | Registration Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Non-Member | $1195 | $1520 |
Renew Your Membership or Join ORS During Registration
Join us as we come together as a unified community of engineers, biologists, clinicians, and trainees dedicated to advancing musculoskeletal research.
When you register for the ORS 2026 Annual Meeting, don’t miss the opportunity to renew or join ORS and experience the full value of being part of our community. Not only will you receive discounted registration rates, but you will also enjoy membership benefits through December 31, 2026.
Newly Added to Your Membership Benefits!
Add-On Workshops and Events
All add-on workshops and events require you to indicate if you plan to attend. Some may include an additional fee.
Your ORS 2026 Annual Meeting registration now includes the most popular networking events and lunch on Saturday and Sunday, making it easier than ever to connect, collaborate, and recharge.
8:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Sponsored by:
Presented by the LearnORS Committee’s Art of Grant Writing Sub-Committee
During the in-person Workshop, participants will learn about funding opportunities for research, meet funding agency representatives, be paired with experienced mentors to go over their proposals and provide valuable feedback on the art of grant writing. The Workshop includes a Specific Page Aims Lab providing participants with the opportunity to prepare and revise a Specific Aims Page, the most important page of the grant application. In addition, a subset of full grants submitted by registrants will be reviewed during a LIVE Mock Study Section. Additional didactics highlight important concepts to supplement information presented in the LearnORS online companion Course. The day ends with a networking reception. Don’t miss out on the networking and mentoring opportunities and the real time feedback you will receive from faculty and funding agency representatives.
Depending on your skill level, we encourage all participants to enroll in the online companion Course either prior to or after attending the in-person Workshop to ensure maximum training value!
All registrants will be invited to submit a Specific Aims Page or full grant proposal for review. Submitting these materials will optimize your Workshop experience! The deadline for submissions was January 30, 2026.
Pre-Registration Required
Registration includes light breakfast, lunch, and networking event.
ORS Members: $150
Non-Members: $250
NON-Member registrants receive a 50% discount on the Art of Grant Writing online course.
1:00 PM – 3:45 PM
Spine in Motion: The ORS Spine Section’s Journey and Vision
Join us for Spine in Motion: The ORS Spine Section’s Journey and Vision, a symposium celebrating our Section’s growth, achievements, and future direction. The event concludes with insights from JOR Spine, highlighting the journal’s continued role in advancing the field.
2:00 PM – 4:30 PM
In preclinical research focused on bone fracture repair, a significant gap exists in understanding and incorporating key variables that influence homeostasis and pathophysiological processes. Factors such as immune system responses, sex disparities, physiological stress, infection, and microbiota are often overlooked. This workshop aims to educate researchers on the critical importance of considering diverse variables in preclinical animal studies, with a particular emphasis on bone fracture research. By raising awareness, researchers can enhance both animal welfare and the validity of their findings, ultimately accelerating the translation of research into clinical practice and improving patient outcomes. During the workshop, we will address key topics through a series of examples from various experts, demonstrating how the inclusion of often-overlooked variables can significantly enhance translational success. The following areas will be discussed:1. Environmental Enrichment in Rodent Models: Strategies for promoting the development of an experienced immune system to improve the translational relevance of fracture repair research.2. The Battle of the Sexes: Side-by-side analyses of fracture repair to identify and prevent sex-related disparities in preclinical studies.3. The Impact of Pain-induced Stress on Bone Healing: Insights into how pain-induced stress disrupts fracture repair, comparing pain behaviors in rodent models with pain responses observed in human patients.4. The Microbiome in Fracture Repair Models: Examination of microbiota dynamics in bone healing indicates and its impact on outcomes and potential translation.
ORS Members: $75
Non-Members: $175
2:30 PM – 4:00 PM
Infection is a major clinical challenge when interventions involve inserting an implant (e.g., the leading cause of revision in arthroplasty). Despite its prevalence, many in the orthopedic implant space have little to no formal education in the root causes of infection. Without such an understanding, the field is limited in our ability to develop novel approaches to diagnose, treat, and mitigate infection during orthopedic interventions. To address this important educational need, this workshop will provide attendees with an overview of infection related to orthopedic implants as well as learn about challenges and opportunities with diagnose, treat, and mitigate infection during arthroplasty. We also plan to provide more fundamental information to set the stage for this workshop by hosting a virtual scientific session in late Fall to overview the basic science of infection. We plan to structure the in-person workshop as a panel discussion to provide ample time for discussion. We also plan to organize a document containing take-homes from the session in collaboration with our invited speakers to be posted on the ORS website. By engaging with this workshop, we expect that attendees will come away with a more holistic understanding of infections related to orthopedic implants. In turn, we believe our community will be better prepared to research, develop, and apply innovative solutions to this prevalent, yet difficult to manage cause of revision in arthroplasty patients.
ORS Members: $75
Non-Members: $175
4:00 PM – 6:30 PM
A networking reception and awards ceremony at nearby RiRa Irish Pub, where we will celebrate achievements and community engagement within the spine research field.
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Kick off the Annual Meeting by reconnecting with colleagues and making new connections in a relaxed, celebratory atmosphere. Whether you are a first-time attendee or a seasoned participant, this event is your chance to start the conference off right.
11:45 AM – 1:15 PM
This interactive mentor-mentee luncheon offers a platform for senior ORS members to share their life stories – be it their successes or failures – with trainees, including students and postdocs. Participants will engage with mentors in an informal setting at a buffet lunch. Mentors will be seated at tables with the trainees and encouraged to discuss their respective career journeys, personal hurdles which had to be overcome and lessons they learned along the way.
This event is now at capacity. Registration Closed.
12:15 PM – 1:30 PM
In this special session to be held over lunch at the 2026 ORS Annual Meeting, scientists and engineers from the orthopaedic industry will present on specific technical advancements that have been introduced to the market within the past two years. Attendees will hear an overview of the technical innovation(s) that differentiate the products from existing solutions, learn about the critical R&D that led to their commercialization, and engage with the industry representatives on areas of ongoing work. Lunch will be provided to accepted registrants.
This event is now at capacity. Registration Closed.
12:15 PM – 1:00 PM
1:00 PM – 3:00 PM
We have assembled a lineup of invited talks for the ORS ISFR section meeting that span basic, translational, and clinical considerations for fracture repair. This session will showcase emerging non-invasive technologies transforming how researchers and clinicians assess bone repair following fracture. Come join our open section meeting celebrating lifetime achievements, rising star speakers, and our members!
Given the increasing prevalence of organoid and tissue-on-a-chip new approach methods (NAMs) in scientific research, the Tendon Section has focused our scientific meeting on this topic. Speakers from outside the tendon field will offer insights into how they use NAMs to better understand basic and translational scientific principles without overly relying on in vivo model systems. These presentations will lead into a broader discussion as a tendon community on features and benchmarks that we think are needed in NAMs to make them valuable for the tendon research field.
1:30 PM – 3:30 PM
This event is now at capacity. Registration Closed.
Speakers to provide historical and current perspective of barriers to regeneration in respective tissue (either meniscus or articular cartilage) and make their arguments for (or against) the position.
1:45 PM – 3:45 PM
Introducing new implant materials is a costly endeavor with rigorous requirements that need to be proven out with benchtop, computational, animal, and clinical experiments, and lengthy regulatory processes. During this year’s Orthopaedic Implant Section meeting, a keynote presentation will explore the status of established implant materials and identify clinical issues that remain unsolved. Finalists from the Implant Section new materials abstract competition will present their pitch during the second half of the meeting. Winners will be determined with real-time audience polling.
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Meeting attendees can enjoy the opportunity to network with fellow attendees and discuss the research from authors presenting their posters in this informal session.
7:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Location: The Public House
This will be a 10 Year Anniversary Celebration highlighting the history of Meniscus, and current and future initiatives of the ORS Meniscus Research Section.
This event is now at capacity. Registration Closed.
7:30 PM – 9:00 PM
The Pride@ORS Social is a networking session at the 2026 ORS Annual Meeting aimed at increasing connections within the network of LGBTQ+ ORS conference attendees, ORS members, and their allies. We will have an open panel discussion on common challenges we face, how the network might help, and opportunities to increase visibility and representation in the community. We welcome all ORS meeting attendees to join us for this discussion. We will provide light refreshments and beverages.
This event is now at capacity. Registration Closed.
7:00 AM – 9:00 AM
Join the members of the Asian Leadership Forum for its Annual Networking Breakfast. You will hear an encouraging keynote address from a prominent leader in the Asian orthopaedic community.
ORS Members and Non-Members: $60
12:15 PM – 1:15 PM
Join the ORS Black Orthopaedic Research Network (BORN) Luncheon as we promote and advance the careers of Black Orthopaedic Researchers, build collaboration and community, and mentor and retain early stage scientists. All are welcome to attend! This event may be of particular significance to registrants who identify as underrepresented or as an ally of the underrepresented in medicine.
Toni M. McLaurin, MD, NYU Grossman School of Medicine
Orthopedics and Me: An Evolution
Dr. Toni McLaurin reflects on her journey in orthopedic surgery, sharing personal challenges, transformative technical advances, and the ongoing need for greater inclusion. She emphasizes the critical roles of mentorship, visibility, and leadership, offering insights into how the field can continue to advance, evolve and innovate both socially and scientifically.
Toni M. McLaurin, MD is a Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Chief of Orthopedics at NYC Health+Hospitals/Bellevue and part of the Trauma Division of NYU Langone Orthopedics. She is a graduate of Harvard College, the University of Michigan Medical School, the Michigan State University orthopedic surgery residency program and an orthopaedic trauma fellowship at Emory University. She also completed a masters in medical informatics at the Northwestern University School of Professional Studies. Her interest is in post-traumatic reconstruction and deformity correction. She is a past Member-at-Large of the AAOS Board of Directors and is active in the OTA, Gladden Society and AO Trauma. She has won numerous teaching and mentoring awards and has been involved in resident education, mentoring, and diversity initiatives her entire career.
Students/Trainees: $10
Professional Members/Non-Members: $25
12:30 PM – 1:15 PM
1:15 PM – 3:15 PM
This event is now at capacity. Registration Closed.
This session will focus on the use of animal models and methods to investigate orthopedic infection in preclinical studies. Topics will include considerations for the design, conduct and resources used to perform impactful research in this area including its important intersection with humane animal use.
This event is now at capacity. Registration Closed.
A panel of orthopedics and sports medicine experts will share their research and perspective on benefits and challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies adoption in musculoskeletal medicine, such as developing novel predictive AI models for clinical outcomes, integrating AI into medical imaging, advancing large language models and medical data AI algorithms, to improve patient care.
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Join the Women’s Leadership Forum and ORS colleagues for an evening of networking and guided discussion to help shape future WLF programming. Complimentary beverages and hors d’oeuvres will be provided.
ORS Members: $45
Non-Members: $65
4:45 PM – 6:15 PM
Meeting attendees can enjoy the opportunity to network with fellow attendees and discuss the research from authors presenting their posters in this informal session.
9:00 PM – 11:00 PM
Close out the meeting on a high note to celebrate a week of shared discovered and connections. This evening will bring relaxation, games, and dancing, featuring a live performance by BEDRock, a band of ORS Member bioengineers
Please note: This is not the full meeting schedule, just the events that require pre-registration.
View the Full Schedule at a Glance
For an additional $20 donation, you can receive an ORS 2026 Annual Meeting T-Shirt. Your donation will benefit ORS’ musculoskeletal research initiatives. This is a great way to share your support for the organization, celebrate the 2026 Annual Meeting, and show your enthusiasm for musculoskeletal research.
Onsite Pickup at the ORS Booth in the Exhibit Hall.
