On June 29 and 30, 2026, the AFNET Steering Committee gathered in Muenster, Germany for this year’s retreat. The two-day meeting focused on personal exchanges, the strategic development of the network and planning future activities.
On May 27, 2026, the SKY AF Summit took place in Frankfurt am Main as an in-person event with an accompanying livestream. The international scientific conference was held under the patronage of AFNET and the DGK.
The public awareness campaign “Herzenssache Lebenszeit” made a successful stop at Paderborn’s Town Hall Square. Together with partners, AFNET employees provided information on heart health, atrial fibrillation and prevention. Many visitors took advantage of the free health screenings and the opportunity to speak with experts in person.
An analysis of the NOAH – AFNET 6 trial used large language models to extract AF burden from pacemaker data in patients with device-detected atrial fibrillation. This approach enables to evaluate the impact of AF burden on cardiovascular outcome and on the effectiveness and safety of anticoagulation in pacemaker patients. The AF burden in the population was 0.4%, with 20% of patients showing a baseline AF burden of more than 1%. In these patients, there was no effect of AF burden on stroke or other cardiovascular events. Today, the findings were presented by AFNET board member Prof. Ulrich Schotten, Maastricht, as a hotline at the Heart Rhythm congress 2026 in Chicago (1).
Once again, four young scientists were honored with the AFNET-sponsored “DGK AFNET Young Investigator Award” for their current research on atrial fibrillation. AFNET Board Member and this year’s DGK Conference President Prof. Dr. Stephan Willems congratulated the award recipients during the award ceremony on April 10, 2026 at the DGK Annual Congress.
As part of the “23 Years of AFNET” session, Prof. Steinbeck presented the AFNET Lecture titled “EP Studies Revisited.” For his long-standing commitment, he received this year’s DGK-AFNET Lecture Award, which was presented for the third time. Prof. Sinner presented the results of the 10th AFNET-EHRA Consensus Conference.
Once again AFNET was present at the 2026 DGK Annual Meeting with a wide range of presentations and events.
At the EHRA 2026 Congress in Paris on 13 April 2026, Prof. Dr. Andreas Götte presented the results of “Kidney disease increases the risk of cardiovascular events in patients with device-detected atrial fibrillation: NOAH-AFNET 6.”
A prespecified analysis of the NOAH – AFNET 6 trial investigated the impact of kidney function on cardiovascular outcome in patients with device-detected atrial fibrillation. Today, the findings were presented by AFNET board member Prof. Andreas Goette, St. Vincenz Hospital, Paderborn, Germany, at the annual congress of the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) in Paris and published in the EP Europace journal (1,2).
Can smartphones play a decisive role in advancing personalized cardiology? In the interview series “Digital Impulses,” Larissa Fabritz from the University Heart and Vascular Center Hamburg discusses the possibilities of early cardiological detection using smartphones.
