2026 Annual Sessions Information

From the Presiding Clerk and the Clerk of Sessions Planning

Friends around New England and beyond—you are invited to the 366th annual sessions of New England Yearly Meeting, July 31–August 4, 2026!

Each year hundreds of Quakers from across New England and beyond join together for worship, fellowship, and seeking how God will guide us in meeting for business. This year we will be gathering on the beautiful campus of Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Friends are encouraged to arrive on Friday, July 31 and we will jump right in on Saturday morning to a combined welcoming celebration and all-ages worship.

Although we will be in a new locale, many of our Sessions traditions will continue. There will be many ways to gather in deep waiting worship, opportunities for learning and sharing with others, workshops, interest groups, our memorial meeting, Vespers, and Coffee House. Our youth from the very youngest to the teens will enjoy a rich experience of community in Spirit. We will be having an opportunity again this year for extended worship on Friday afternoon. We are also considering having more programming for people who arrive Friday evening—stay tuned for details. 

Our last day together (Tuesday, August 4) will have a slightly different schedule: in the morning we will have a full meeting for business (while the youth programs will have an extra full morning as well), followed by lunch, and then all ages will gather together after lunch for our closing celebration. 

No site is perfect and two issues of note this year are that there is no camping available on campus and none of the dorms have air conditioning. There are a small number of hotel rooms on campus with air conditioning, which will be prioritized for those with medical needs. However, there are several hotels and campsites within easy commuting distance to campus. More information will be posted on the Yearly Meeting website prior to registration opening.

Sessions is most vibrant when all Friends who are interested are able to attend. We encourage you to register however works best for you. Be it for a day or the whole time, commuting or staying on campus, we welcome you to come. Sessions continues to be pay-as-led. Please don’t let an inability to pay prevent you from participating! Any amount you can contribute, however small, helps to keep Sessions financially viable for everyone.

Our theme, “Spring Forth O Well, and Make Us Whole,” (from Numbers 21:17) speaks to the external challenges of racism, rising authoritarianism, community divisions, international conflict, and environmental crises that are on the hearts of New England Friends. It also is a prayer for guidance and faithful action internally as we continue to struggle with the habits of mind and practice that reflect oppressions in the society within which Friends are embedded. In response to these conditions, we seek the power of renewal and transformation that God invites us to, moment by moment. Friends in the past have been led to take bold actions. Together this year, let us discern what we are called to do in these times.

C. Wess Daniels (he/him, friend) will be our Sunday afternoon plenary speaker. He is the William R. Rogers Director of Friends Center and Quaker Studies at Guilford College. The highlight of this work for him is working with undergraduate students, teaching classes like Introduction to Quakerism, The Practice of Silence, and Boredom as a Superpower. Wess’s writings include the book Resisting Empire: The Book of Revelation as Resistance (2019) and a forthcoming Pendle Hill Pamphlet (#500) Liturgies of Imperialism, Liturgies of Resistance. Wess is a recorded Quaker minister and member of First Friends Meeting in Greensboro, NC. He is committed to the work of regaining our capacity for deep attention, anti-imperial expressions of Christianity, and the building of liberatory movements that embody love and justice in the world.  

Adria (Gulizia) DiCapua will deliver the Bible half hour talks.  She is a lawyer, mediator, teacher, and mother. Adria carries a concern for how Friends’ traditional faith and practice translates into an increasingly unstable, atomized, and uncertain world. She is passionate about inviting all into deeper relationship with the Spirit of Christ, which spoke so strongly to early Friends and continues to speak today. She is a member of Chatham-Summit Monthly Meeting (New York Yearly Meeting), the Friends of Jesus Fellowship, and the Board of Advisors of Earlham School of Religion. She has facilitated workshops on a variety of topics, including spiritual gifts, listening as a practice of pastoral care, and Friends’ traditional commitment to the Lamb’s War and is currently co-leading a two-year course through the School of the Spirit called “God’s Promise Fulfilled: Encountering and Embodying Grace in the Shadow of Empire.” Adria’s writing has been published by Friends Journal, Pendle Hill Pamphlets, and Illuminate, a Bible study curriculum written by and for Friends. Her blog, “In the Shadow of Babylon,” can be found at shadowofbabylon.com.  

We are grateful to the many Friends who do the extensive work of planning for this multi-day event. Together we are moving forward thanks to the efforts of these many dedicated Friends, reminding us that when two or more are gathered, the Holy Spirit is present and at work. If you are led to share your gifts at Sessions this year, please visit this link for more information and to volunteer.

So join us, whether for a day or 5 days, in South Hadley or on Zoom. Come with the expectancy that we will be touched by the Divine, and that individually and collectively we will move a bit closer to the image God has for us. Each of us will come bringing our daily life—full of concerns, griefs, joys—and in our gathering, share these cares and return renewed.

Phillip Veatch, Presiding Clerk
Kristin Wilson, Sessions Planning Clerk

For Those New to Sessions

Below in the "Downloads" section is information about our practice of "Pay-as-Led." Registration for Sessions will open on or about June 1.