Astronomers gathered online for the Little Red Dots 2026 workshop to examine newly discovered compact red objects in the early Universe, Nature Astronomy reported on September 7, 2026. The online event brought together 230 total participants to evaluate the physical nature of these compact astrophysical objects. Workshop sessions featured 33 invited speakers alongside 19 flash talks dedicated to the early universe discoveries.
Dominik R. G. Schleicher, Andrés Escala, Francesco Flammini Dotti, and Muhammad A. Latif authored the conference report. Escala, Flammini Dotti, and Latif contributed equally to the paper. The co-authors represent the Dipartimento di Fisica at Sapienza Università di Roma, the Departamento de Astronomía at Universidad de Chile in Santiago, the Department of Physics and the Center for Astrophysics and Space Science at New York University Abu Dhabi, and the Physics Department at United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain.
Jorryt Matthee and Roberta Tripodi chaired the sessions during the event. Michel Andrés Contreras Solís assisted the authors with Figure 1, and the authors formally declared that they have no competing interests. The journal registered the peer-reviewed version of record under the digital object identifier 10.1038/s41550-026-02967-7.
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