The 12th Physics of Volcanoes (PoV) workshop took place in Potsdam from 18 to 20 February 2026.

A record number of 160 participants registered for the event. While around 60 scientists and students came from the Potsdam and Berlin area, the remaining 100 participants came from 45 institutions in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Iceland, Great Britain, and India. After an icebreaker on Wednesday evening in the foyer of the University of Potsdam's geosciences building, the scientific program took place from Thursday morning to Friday afternoon in the adjacent lecture halls and on other floors of the building.

A total of 30 presentations and 48 posters were presented in four thematic sessions:

• Geophysics and Remote Sensing, 
• Geochemistry and Petrology, 
• Hazards and Monitoring, and
• Volcano Seismology. 

As is typical for the PoV, the program was deliberately mixed to promote a diverse and exciting exchange. Once again this year, the majority of contributions came from young scientists; in addition to numerous contributions from doctoral students, there were also presentations and posters from MSc and BSc students.

This year, the presentations and posters were supplemented by Geo.X discussion panels on the topics of

• Triggering Unrest, Forecasting and Monitoring of Eruptions, 
• From Signals to Processes: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Real-Time Eruption Characterization,
• 2D and 3D Imaging of Volcanic Products: From the micro to nano-scale,
• Unrest on the Reykjanes peninsula, Iceland: Multidisciplinary opportunities,
• Linking petrology and seismology to image magma reservoirs,
• Where, how long, at what conditions and in what geometric form do eruptible magmas reside in the shallow crust prior to eruption: linking petrological and geophysical observations,
• Infrastructure topic: New large instruments/networks in volcano research (fiber optics, Safator, satellites, TandemL, EPOS) and
• Modeling the geohazard - were discussed in greater depth.

The workshop was organized by Eva Eibl, Jia-Yun Peng, Gizem Izgi, Alea Joachim, and Nele Vesely (University of Potsdam), and the discussion rounds were led by Thomas Walter (GFZ Potsdam) and Melanie Sieber (TU Berlin) in addition to the hosts from the University of Potsdam. As usual, participation in the PoV was free of charge also this year.

We would like to express our sincere thanks for the financial support provided by the German Geophysical Society (Volcanology Working Group), the German Volcanological Society (DVG), DIGOS, the University of Potsdam, Geo.X, and the German Mineralogical Society for providing travel grants to student members.

Special thanks go to the Student Council of Geosciences at the University of Potsdam, whose members supported the workshop by selling drinks and cake, and thanks also to numerous other helpers on site without whom the event would certainly not have been so well received. 

We look forward to the next POV, organized by Harri Geiger and his team in Freiburg.