Visa requirements & letter of invitation

General information

A valid travel document is required to travel and to attend the congress in Switzerland. Travel documents of third-country nationals for a short stay not exceeding 90 days in any period of 180 days, however, must:

• be valid for at least three months after the planned departure from Switzerland and
• have been issued within the previous ten years.

The date of issue of the travel document is what counts, regardless of any official extension.

In some cases, you may also need to obtain a visa. To find out if you need to obtain a visa and if there are any requirements for your travel documents, please see this website.

Letter of invitation

Participants that require an official invitation letter in order to obtain a visa, to raise travel funds or for administrative purposes should apply for this invitation via the online request form by at least 8 weeks prior to the meeting at the very latest.

Please note that invitation letters will only be issued to participants who either have a paid conference registration or an accepted abstract. Therefore, please only submit your request for an invitation letter only after having received your letter of acceptance notification or after having paid your conference registration.

It should be understood, however, that such an invitation is not a commitment on the part of the organizers to provide financial support.

It should be understood that the organizers can only issue an invitation which includes the period of the conference plus the Saturdays and Sundays directly before and after the conference, respectively.

If requested for visa purposes, the letter of invitation will be sent by email, as well as an original copy by airmail (standard letter without tracking number). We would like to point out that invitation letters are only sent to the address indicated by the applicant. The provided name and address must exactly match that on your passport. The organizers will NOT send invitation letters to embassies, neither by fax/email nor by separate post. The applicants are responsible to take care of their own visa application and need to directly contact the respective embassy. Please consider that the invitation letter is a standard letter which will not be modified individually. You are responsible for contacting the relevant Swiss Embassy or Consulate and for finding out what kind of visa you require. Please allow sufficient time for your letter to be processed and the local Embassy to process your visa.