ERGA 2025: Community Highlights
- luisamarins19
- Dec 17, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 19, 2025
To celebrate the many great achievements of our community this year, we present a showcase of 2025 highlights from across ERGA.
The last ERGA Plenary of 2025 was an opportunity to look back on a year of progress across our committees, reflecting the strength, diversity, and collaborative spirit of Europe’s biodiversity genomics community. From technical advances to community building, policy development, and social justice, each committee contributed key pieces to ERGA’s shared mission. Below, we highlight some of the main achievements and ongoing priorities from each of ERGA’s committees.
Executive Board
2025 marked a milestone year for the ERGA Executive Board:
ERGA was formally recognized as the European Regional Node of the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP).
The first two ERGA national nodes, ERGA Slovenia and ERGA Switzerland, received official recognition.
2025 was the first year in which ERGA operated with a complete Executive Board of nine members as set out in the Governance Document
Sampling & Sample Processing (SSP) Committee
The SSP Committee continued to lead ERGA’s efforts on best practices for sampling.
Organized the first very successful Taxon Sampling SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) “Hackathon”, bringing together experts across the tree of life.
Advanced several manuscripts, with one currently under revision and others in preparation.
Prepared the first set of taxon-specific sampling SOPs, scheduled for publication in early 2026.
Sequencing & Assembly Committee (SAC)
The lively SAC focused on coordination of sequencing efforts, troubleshooting, and future-facing sequencing strategies.
Facilitated community discussions on long-read sequencing approaches and assembly best practices.
Contributed feedback to the EBP on assembly recommendations and engaged with the Tree of Life Genome Forum.
Began planning a BioHackathon Europe proposal for 2026 to support hands-on community problem-solving.
Annotation Committee
Supporting high-quality, standardized genome annotations remained a core focus of the Annotation Committee.
Ongoing development of an annotation reporting tool aligned with ERGA reporting standards, initiated during the BioHackathon Europe 2025.
Began preparations for a the Annotation Training School next year (if you are interested in this initiative, please reach out: annotation@erga-biodiversity.eu)
Data Analysis Committee
The Data Analysis Committee (DAC) supported harmonized downstream use of ERGA genomes.
Continued of the successful ERGA BioGenome Analysis & Application Seminar Series with 5 interesting talks and thousands of views.
Participated in this year’s BioHackathon Europe working on a Snakemake workflow to build phylogenomic trees from BUSCO genes.
Established the Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) - Working Group which has been meeting and progressing regularly.
IT & Infrastructure Committee
Ensuring robust data management and provenance tracking is the central mission of the ITIC.
Developed several data provenance and management guidelines, covering the full lifecycle from sampling to publication. (Check the guidelines in our Zenodo community page)
Strengthened collaboration with external portals and repositories such as ENA and GoaT to align standards and metadata.
Ethics, Legal & Social Issues (ELSI) Committee
The ELSI Committee focuses on critical policy and governance work.
Released an information brief and the ERGA position on Digital Sequence Information.
Progressed a manuscript on non-monetary benefit sharing in biodiversity genomics.
Initiated revisions to ERGA’s privacy policy to reflect evolving data practices.
Media & Communications Committee
The Media & Communications Committee strengthened ERGA’s visibility and outreach.
Expanded ERGA’s website, newsletter, and social media presence, reaching new audiences.
Supported outreach activities around major events and conferences, such as ESEB2025 and the Genomics for Biodiversity Conference.
Began work with a design company on a new ERGA visual identity, planned for release in 2026.
Citizen Science Committee
The Citizen Science Committee's main focus is stakeholder engagement:
Published the review article “Biodiversity Genomics Research Practices Require Harmonising to Meet Stakeholder Needs in Conservation” as part of a Molecular Ecology Special Issue.
Conducted a stakeholder engagement survey, with a manuscript planned for publication in 2026.
Started working on a “biodiversity genomics alphabet” to support public-facing communication.
Training & Knowledge Transfer Committee
The Training & Knowledge Transfer (TKT) Committee committee focused on capacity building and resource sharing.
Expanded the ERGA Knowledge Hub with more training materials and a new section for events.
Played a key role in the organization of the
EMBO course in genome sequencing, assembly, curation, and downstream analyses.
Social Justice Committee
Embedding equity and ethics into ERGA’s structures is the central goal of the Social Justice Committee.
Advanced a social justice positioning statement for ERGA.
Started work on a social justice teaching module, to be integrated into the Knowledge Hub in 2026.
Looking Ahead
Together, these updates reflect a community that is not only producing genomes, but also building the infrastructure, standards, policies, and inclusive culture needed to sustain biodiversity genomics in Europe for the long term. As ERGA moves into 2026, the continued collaboration across committees will remain key to turning shared vision into lasting impact.
We thank each and every ERGA member for their commitment and contributions. A special thanks to our dedicated committee members who generously gave their time to support the community. It is inspiring to see ERGA continue to grow, and we look forward to fostering even more exciting interactions and collaborations in the future.
See you in 2026!
