Participation

Around 450 delegates, and the room is built rather than filled.

• Two thirds are professionals, people already working in ministries, chambers, firms, funds and start-ups on both sides of the Channel, and one third are students, from undergraduates to doctoral researchers.
• Roughly even between the United Kingdom and the German-speaking countries, with about one in ten coming from neither.
• Law, politics and international relations, economics and business dominate, with a deliberate minority from everywhere else.
• Add the speakers, accredited journalists, scholars and the committee, and some 750 people are on site across the three days.
• Large enough that you will not run out of new people. Small enough that you will keep meeting the same ones.

No. There is no nationality requirement of any kind, and there never was going to be.

• The conference exists to move the German-British relationship forward, not to check passports at the door.
• No citizenship, residency or heritage requirement, and none is asked at registration.
• We expect a substantial number of delegates to hold neither nationality. What Britain and Germany decide together is a European question before it is a bilateral one.
• The only real qualification is wanting to spend three days on it.

English, from the opening address to the final panel on Sunday.

• Every session, keynote, workshop and evening event runs in English.
• No interpretation, and none needed.
• You require no German at all. Several of our speakers would rather be arguing in it, but they have agreed not to.
• English at the level of a university seminar is enough.

No, and that is a deliberate decision rather than an oversight.

• We chose not to constitute ourselves as a University society or to seek formal affiliation. Doing so would place the programme under someone else's approval, and programmatic independence is the one thing this conference cannot trade away.
• Independence is what allows us to put figures on a panel together who would not otherwise share a stage, and to let them say what they came to say.
• The conference nonetheless takes place inside the University: the Saïd Business School and the Blavatnik School of Government as the two hubs, with college rooms around them.
• Senior academics from both universities sit on our Advisory Board, among them Prof. Brendan Simms of Cambridge, Prof. Dr. Isabell Welpe of TU Munich, and the Principal of Somerville College, Oxford.

German-UK Student Conference C.I.C., a community interest company registered in England and Wales.

• Incorporated on 25 March 2026 under the Companies Act 2006 as a private company limited by guarantee, company number 17116136.
• Registered office: Unit 1 Kings Meadow, Ferry Hinksey Road, Oxford OX2 0DP.
• As a community interest company it is subject to a statutory asset lock and to the oversight of the Office of the Regulator of Community Interest Companies. It cannot distribute profits or assets to its members, and any surplus is applied to its community purpose.
• It is a non-profit entity but not a registered charity, and it does not hold charitable status for tax purposes.
• Its directors of record at Companies House are Youssef Hefny, Ludwig Illies and Florian Fabricius. Full statutory filings are publicly available at Companies House, and our imprint carries the complete registration details.

Ask the people who hold them. Codes travel through the network, not through the front door.

• Every confirmed speaker holds codes. So does every committee member. So does every partner institution: societies, chambers, associations, faculties and foundations across both countries.
• If you belong to one of our partner organisations, ask it directly. Most hold an allocation for their members and are looking for the right people to give it to.
• If you know someone connected to the conference, ask them. That is precisely how the invitation round is designed to work.
• Failing all of that, the early bird release on 14 September needs no code at all, and is first come, first served.
• Scholarship applications open on 20 September and require no code either.

It is your entry to the round, not a seat with your name on it.

• A code lets you register during the invitation round, from 20 September to 20 October. It does not reserve anything while you consider it.
• There are more codes in circulation than there are places. Not everyone who holds one will get in.
• Codes stop working the moment the places are gone, and the round closes early if it fills early. This is not a formality.
• No application to write and no interview to sit: the selectivity is in who receives a code, not in what happens afterwards.
• Register in the first days of the round, not the last.

Three days of the conference, in full, and the evening programme around it.

• Access to everything on the programme: every panel, keynote, fireside, workshop and networking format, across all six streams, from Friday morning to Sunday afternoon.
• The evening programme, including the Friday event at the Oxford Union and the Gala on Saturday night.
• Your delegate materials, the conference handbook, and your place on the delegate platform.
• Arrangements for hospitality across the conference days are confirmed with our venues nearer the time and published in the handbook.
• Not included: travel to Oxford, and accommodation while you are here.

Wherever you like, as long as you book it the day your place is confirmed.

• Accommodation is not included, and Oxford in late November is not a city with spare rooms. Michaelmas term is in full swing and the colleges are full.
• The Saïd Business School is a two-minute walk from the railway station and the Blavatnik ten minutes beyond it. Anywhere central puts you inside the conference footprint.
• Options run from college guest rooms and hotels near the station to considerably cheaper rooms out towards Jericho and Cowley, twenty minutes on foot or five by bus.
• We publish a list of options before the conference, including any rates we secure for delegates.
• If you genuinely cannot find a room, write to delegates@oxford-gbc.co.uk. We will help where we can, and for a limited number of students we can arrange floors and spare rooms with committee members and Oxford delegates.

Yes, though the simplest route is usually for each person to book individually and claim it back.

• Individual registration and an expense claim is the fastest path, and the one most organisations prefer. Your receipt is issued immediately and is sufficient for reimbursement.
• Where your finance department requires a proper invoice, we issue one from German-UK Student Conference C.I.C., with purchase-order numbers, VAT details and anything else they insist on.
• Collective billing for several colleagues on a single invoice can be arranged. Write to partnerships@oxford-gbc.co.uk before registering rather than after.
• If your organisation wants to send a group, say so at the same time. Institutional delegations are arranged directly with us rather than through the public rounds, and we can seat people together.

There are routes open to you, and we would rather you took one of them than quietly gave up.

• The Scholars of the Conference programme awards ten places that carry a free ticket, a £100 travel stipend and a seat at the Speakers' Dinner. Applications open on 20 September, and the programme is set out in full further up this page.
• Ask someone to fund you. Foundations, political foundations, alumni networks, German-British associations, chambers of commerce, your faculty, your employer, your union: a great many of them hold small travel and conference budgets that go unclaimed each year because nobody asks. We are happy to provide a supporting letter.
• If none of this fits your circumstances, write to us anyway. We would rather hear from you than lose you.

Until the end of October, yes. After that, you can pass your place on instead.

• Full refund, less the payment-processing fee, up to 31 October 2026.
• After that date we cannot refund: our commitments to venues and suppliers are fixed by then, and the place has already been paid for on your behalf.
• You may transfer your ticket to someone else until 20 November. Send their name to contact@oxford-gbc.co.uk and we will handle the rest.
• Scholarship places are personal and cannot be transferred.

Probably. The format is designed to make it likely rather than to leave it to chance.

• Sessions run in parallel in rooms of fifty to a hundred and fifty. There is no auditorium to be lost at the back of.
• Panels are built around argument and questions from the floor, not an address delivered from a stage.
• Lunch runs long by design, given over to workshops, fishbowls and open networking rather than a scheduled gap.
• The Friday evening at the Union and the Gala on Saturday put delegates and speakers in the same room with nothing between them.
• We ask our speakers to stay for the day rather than appear for an hour. We cannot promise you a conversation with any particular person, but you will not be watching from a balcony.

Long days, early starts, and an evening programme that is part of the conference rather than an afterthought.

• Friday. Registration from late morning, the formal opening at two, the first panels, then across to the Oxford Union for the evening, and on to the receptions.
• Saturday. The full day: parallel sessions across the six streams, a long working lunch, keynotes, the founders' lightning round, and the closing panel of the afternoon, then the formal dinners and the Gala.
• Sunday. Two further session blocks, a final lunch, a closing keynote, and an end at three so that trains and flights are catchable.
• You build your own conference from the sessions on offer, room by room, rather than following a fixed track.

Smart casual by day. Black tie for the Union on Friday, and for the Gala and formal dinners on Saturday.

• Daytime sessions are smart casual, the register of a seminar room rather than a boardroom.
• Black tie for the Friday evening at the Oxford Union and for Saturday night. If you neither own it nor wish to hire it, a dark suit or an equivalent is entirely acceptable, and nobody is turned away at the door over a jacket.
• Pub sessions, receptions and everything unofficial: wear what you like.
• Late November in Oxford is cold, dark by four, and generally raining sideways. The walk between venues is short but exposed, and the colleges are older than central heating. Bring a proper coat, and shoes that cope with wet cobbles.

Very little until November, and then quite a lot at once.

• Confirmation and a receipt arrive immediately.
• Every delegate receives a personal page on the conference platform, which is where the practical business of the weekend happens.
• From 1 November at 00:00 you select the sessions you want to attend. Places in each room are limited and allocated first come, first served: the popular sessions go quickly, and the platform is worth being awake for.
• The delegate handbook is circulated in the weeks before the conference: the full programme, venue details, arrival times, maps and the accommodation list.
• Nothing else is asked of you in the meantime.