I'm 99.9% sure the poster session is no different from every other poster session I've ever been around. Rows and rows of posters detailing the highlights of the study/info being "presented", with the "speaker" or representative standing next to it waiting for whoever might want to engage with them over the course of, in the case of ESMO, 45 minutes. There was over 1,800 posters at ESMO 2024 yet only about 600 people listed as speakers in their 2024 recap.

Here's the link where you can scroll down slightly and see on the center/right side of the page the 2024 conference by the numbers.

https://www.esmo.org/meeting-calendar/past-me...gress-2024

And if you go into the abstracts link on the left you can find all the different categories (there's a ton) and the criteria for which kind of abstract you're getting:

The ESMO Congress 2024 Scientific Committee will select abstracts for presentation during the Congress based on the following possibilities:

Presidential Symposium - Oral presentations of cutting-edge and significant clinical practice-changing studies, followed by expert discussion and perspectives.

Proffered Paper – Oral presentations of original data of superior quality, followed by expert discussion and perspectives.

Mini Oral – Short oral presentation of good quality, followed by expert discussion and perspectives.

Poster – Display session for review, discussion and questions. The presenting authors must be available for Q&A to represent their work.

All accepted abstracts will be published in the ESMO Congress 2024 Abstract Book, a supplement to the official ESMO journal, Annals of Oncology.



I was just at a national conference last week and they had a poster session that was pretty similar. Might have been open longer, but it's standard stuff. If it were something better than a poster presentation they'd likely have worded it a different way based on the different types of abstract presentations.