PERRLA/Guides/APA 7/Conference presentation

How to Cite a Conference Presentation in APA 7

An APA 7 reference for a conference presentation lists the presenters as authors, the full dates of the conference in parentheses, the presentation title in italics and sentence case, a description in square brackets like [Conference presentation] or [Paper presentation], the conference name, and its city, state, and country. End with a link when the slides, a recording, or the program listing is online. The in-text citation is the presenter's last name and the year: (Dent et al., 2023).

The format

Presenter, A. A., & Presenter, B. B. (Year, Month Day–Day). Title of the presentation [Conference presentation]. Conference Name, City, State, Country. https://xxxx

PERRLA APA Experts · Updated October 21, 2026
Checked against the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th edition. Every example is formatted by PERRLA's reference engine.

First, the easy way: PERRLA

Choose Conference & Symposium Materials, then Conference Session or Presentation. Add each presenter in the Author / Presenter role, in the order the program lists them. Then fill in the Contribution Title, the Type of Contribution (like Conference presentation or Paper presentation), the Conference Name, the city, the state, the country, and the Conference Start Date. Add an end date when the conference ran more than one day, and PERRLA prints the whole range, like 2023, November 12–15. Paste the link to the slides, recording, or program page last.

PERRLA italicizes the title, puts your description in square brackets, and puts every part in order. Type the title in sentence case, and put back any capital letters the program dropped from names. If you type the title in title case, PERRLA points that out and offers to fix it.

Presented as part of a symposium? Choose Symposium Contribution instead. Add the symposium's chairs in the Symposium Chairperson role and its name in Symposium Title. PERRLA writes In, the chairs' names, (Chair) or (Chairs), the symposium title in italics, and [Symposium] for you.

Quoting the slides or a recording? In the citation, pick Other. Type Slide as the label and the slide number as the value, or leave the label blank and type the time, like 12:41.

One thing to skip: pasting the program link into PERRLA's reference search. The search reads a conference program page as a webpage, which isn't how the APA format cites a presentation, so build this reference by hand.

Not using PERRLA yet? Here is how to build the same reference by hand.

The parts of the reference

1. Presenters

The people who gave the presentation are the authors. Write each last name, a comma, and the initials, and list everyone the program names, in its order, up to 20. Put an ampersand (&) before the last name.

Dent, R., Chen, C., Strasser, J., Muñoz, L., Ziemann, M., DeSmidt, B., & Perlo, J.

Conference programs print credentials after every name (RN, PhD, MPH). Leave them all out. Keep accents and the capitals inside a name, like Muñoz and DeSmidt, exactly as the program spells them.

2. Conference dates

Give the year, then the month and the days of the whole conference, in parentheses, followed by a period. Use the conference's dates, not the day or hour of your session. Put an en dash (–) between the first and last days.

(2023, November 12–15).

A conference that crosses into a new month names both months: March 30–April 2. A one-day event takes just its date: (2024, April 12).

3. Title and description

Italicize the presentation title and write it in sentence case: capitalize the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns. Then add a short description in square brackets, not italic, and a period.

False promise: Nurse Licensure Compact fails to improve nurse staffing at hospitals [Paper presentation].

Programs often lowercase names that need capitals. This one printed "nurse licensure compact," but the Nurse Licensure Compact is the name of an agreement, so it keeps its capitals. The description is flexible: [Conference presentation], [Paper presentation], [Conference session], [Keynote address], or [Poster presentation] all work. If you only read the abstract, say so: [Conference presentation abstract].

4. Conference name and location

Write the conference's name the way the program does, then the city, the state's two-letter abbreviation, and the country, separated by commas. The country goes in every time, even for a conference in the United States.

APHA 2023 Annual Meeting and Expo, Atlanta, GA, United States.

Outside the United States, give the city, the state or province if the country uses them, and the country: Sydney, NSW, Australia. The manual's examples are all in-person meetings, so for a conference held only online there's no city to give. Leave the location out, and PERRLA ends this part after the conference name.

5. Link

End with a link when your reader can see something of the presentation: the slides, a recording, or the conference's own page for the session. Don't add a period after it, and don't write "Retrieved from."

https://apha.confex.com/apha/2023/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/526574

Heard the talk in person, with nothing of it posted? Leave the link off and end after the country. A conference presentation still goes on your references page, because the conference program shows your reader it happened.

Examples

A talk on health worker burnout from the 2023 American Public Health Association meeting in Atlanta, by a team of seven from George Washington University and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. The program printed "the dr. lorna breen act," so the reference puts the capitals back on the name of the law.

  • Parenthetical citation(Dent et al., 2023)
  • Narrative citationDent et al. (2023)

A paper presentation you heard in person

A two-presenter talk on the Nurse Licensure Compact and hospital staffing from the same 2023 meeting. You were in the room, and no slides or recording were posted, so the reference ends with the location, the way the manual's own paper presentation example does.

  • Parenthetical citation(Rabourn & Johnson, 2023)
  • Narrative citationRabourn and Johnson (2023)

The abstract of a conference presentation

A study of school connection and adolescent suicide risk, presented at the 2024 American Public Health Association meeting in Minneapolis. If you read only the abstract in the online program, the word abstract goes in the description, and the link points to the abstract.

  • Parenthetical citation(Bird et al., 2024)
  • Narrative citationBird et al. (2024)

In-text citations

An APA 7 in-text citation for a conference presentation gives the presenter's last name and the year of the conference.

  • One presenter: (Presenter, 2023) or Presenter (2023)
  • Two presenters: both names every time, joined by & in parentheses and by and in your sentence: (Rabourn & Johnson, 2023) or Rabourn and Johnson (2023)
  • Three or more presenters: the first presenter and et al., from the first citation on: (Dent et al., 2023) or Dent et al. (2023)
  • A quote from posted slides: give the slide number: (Presenter, 2023, Slide 4)
  • A quote from a recording: give the time the quote starts: (Presenter, 2023, 12:41)

A presentation has no page numbers, so a quote points to a slide or a time instead. If you heard the talk live and have neither, paraphrase it rather than quoting what you remember.

Common mistakes

  • Dent, R., Chen, C., Strasser, J., Muñoz, L., Ziemann, M., DeSmidt, B., & Perlo, J. (2023, November 15).Dent, R., Chen, C., Strasser, J., Muñoz, L., Ziemann, M., DeSmidt, B., & Perlo, J. (2023, November 12–15).The date is the span of the whole conference, not the day of the session. APA uses the conference dates so the reference points to the meeting, not one hour of it.
  • APHA 2023 Annual Meeting and Expo, Atlanta, GA.APHA 2023 Annual Meeting and Expo, Atlanta, GA, United States.APA 7 adds the country to every conference location, including conferences held in the United States.
  • Dent, R., PhD, Chen, C., MD, MPH, Strasser, J., DrPH, MPHDent, R., Chen, C., Strasser, J.,Programs list degrees and credentials after each name. A reference never includes them.
  • Addressing health worker burnout: Insights from the dr. lorna breen act granteesAddressing health worker burnout: Insights from the Dr. Lorna Breen Act granteesSentence case still capitalizes proper nouns. The Dr. Lorna Breen Act is the name of a law, so it keeps its capitals even when the program drops them.
  • Rabourn, M., & Johnson, N. (2023, November). False promise: Nurse Licensure Compact fails to improve nurse staffing at hospitals. Paper presented at the APHA 2023 Annual Meeting and Expo, Atlanta, GA.Rabourn, M., & Johnson, N. (2023, November 12–15). False promise: Nurse Licensure Compact fails to improve nurse staffing at hospitals [Paper presentation]. APHA 2023 Annual Meeting and Expo, Atlanta, GA, United States."Paper presented at" is the older APA 6 wording, and many generators still use it. APA 7 describes the presentation in square brackets after the title and adds the full dates and the country.
  • Dent, R., Chen, C., Strasser, J., Muñoz, L., Ziemann, M., DeSmidt, B., & Perlo, J. (2023, November 15). Addressing health worker burnout: Insights from the Dr. Lorna Breen Act grantees. APHA.Dent, R., Chen, C., Strasser, J., Muñoz, L., Ziemann, M., DeSmidt, B., & Perlo, J. (2023, November 12–15). Addressing health worker burnout: Insights from the Dr. Lorna Breen Act grantees [Conference presentation]. APHA 2023 Annual Meeting and Expo, Atlanta, GA, United States.This is what you get when a tool reads the program link as a webpage. A presentation needs its bracketed description, the conference's name, and its location.

Quick checklist

  • Every presenter, up to 20, with no credentials
  • The full dates of the conference, with an en dash between the days
  • Title in italics and sentence case, with proper nouns capitalized
  • A description in square brackets, like [Conference presentation] or [Paper presentation]
  • Conference name, then city, state, and country
  • A link if slides, a recording, or the program page is online

Questions students ask

What date goes in a conference presentation reference?

The dates of the whole conference, not the day you presented or the hour of the session. Write the year, the month, and the first and last days with an en dash between them, like (2023, November 12–15). The citation uses the year only.

How do I cite a presentation from a virtual conference?

Use the same format and leave the location out, since there's no city to give. The manual's examples are all in-person meetings, so nothing replaces the location. End with a link to the recording or the session page if your reader can reach it.

Do I need a URL for a conference presentation?

Only when something of the presentation is online, like the slides, a recording, or the session's page in the program. If you heard it in person and nothing was posted, end after the location. It still goes on your references page.

How do I cite a keynote address?

Use the conference presentation format with [Keynote address] as the description. If you watched it on YouTube or another video site, cite the video instead, with the account that posted it as the author and [Video] as the label.

What if the presentation was published in the conference proceedings?

Cite the published version. Proceedings published in a journal follow the journal article format, and proceedings published as a book follow the edited book or book chapter format. Use the presentation format only for work that was presented and not published.

How do I cite a talk given in a symposium?

The talk's title comes first, not italic, then In, the chairs' initials and last names with (Chair) or (Chairs), the symposium's title in italics, and [Symposium]. The conference name and location follow. In PERRLA, choose Symposium Contribution and the format is built for you.

Rules checked against the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.), Sections 6.17, 8.13, 8.17, 8.28, 9.8, 9.14, 9.19, 9.21, 9.34, and 10.5 (Examples 60–63), and the APA Style website's conference presentation references page. Each example was verified on October 21, 2026, against its session page in the American Public Health Association's online program (presenters, title, session type, and session date) and the program's home page for each meeting's dates and city (Atlanta, November 12–15, 2023; Minneapolis, October 27–30, 2024).

PERRLA builds the conference presentation reference from what you fill in, with the full date range, the bracketed description, and the location in APA order.

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