Dear Epizone members,

2025 has been an interesting and turbulent year for EPIZONE. After 16 years as coordinator of EPIZONE, Wim van der Poel handed over this role to Matthijn de Boer, who was elected by the coordinating forum. Matthijn is busy thinking about new plans for EPIZONE.

European countries had to deal with outbreaks of epizootic diseases, for example the foot- and mouth disease outbreaks, lumpy skin disease, bluetongue and avian influenza. This means a lot of work for the EPIZONE member institutes.

In September, EPIZONE had a session in the 13th International Congress for Veterinary Virology in Slovenia. The meeting was a succes, with great and inspiring posters and discussions among ESVV and EPIZONE members. Also, a very successful young scientists meeting was organized by two Young EPIZONE members. We would like to thank (again) the board of ESVV, the local organization and Adriana and Elena from IRTA for their effort to make this possible!

Right now, in The Netherlands we have to deal with a serious outbreak of avian influenza, leading to a large workload within our institute. That is why we are not sending an official EPIZONE newsletter right now, but will come back to you with more news in the beginning of 2026. At this moment, we can already reveal a little bit of future plans: we will start with a coordinator for Young EPIZONE, who will help to let Young EPIZONE grow and organize activities. We will send out more information soon.

On behalf of everybody here in Lelystad who is involved in the coordinating tasks of EPIZONE, we wish you all a very merry Christmas and a good start of 2026!

Matthijn de Boer and Manon Swanenburg