In various incarnations, the series of thermochronology meetings stretches back to the first gathering in 1978 as a fission-track dating session organized by Chuck Naeser at the ICOG conference Snowmass, Utah. In 1980, the first International Workshop on Fission Track Dating was held in Pisa. By the 2000 conference in Lorne, Australia, the meeting had come to be called the International Fission Track Thermochronology conference, and at the 2008 meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, it was decided that all future conferences would be called simply the International Thermochronology conference. As the series developed over the years, an informal agreement emerged that the conferences would be biennial and would alternate between a location in Europe and elsewhere in the world.

The meeting series (see below) was interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, and the scheduled meeting in Santa Fe was delayed until 2021, moving the biennial conference series to odd-numbered years (the community did have a virtual workshop series in 2022 to showcase the work of earlier-career scientists). The last conference was held at Riva del Garda, Italy in September 2023, while the next conference will be held in Kanazawa, Japan, in mid-September 2025. In 2027, the conference will be held in Canada.

Initial meeting bids for future years are presented to the delegates at a Thermo conference for initial discussion and reaction, usually six years in advance. As organizers firm up, the standing committee makes the decision as to which bid to confirm four years in advance. This process ensures the continuity of the meeting.

One of the most important roles of the ISCT is in fact to maintain the continuity of the wonderful series of meetings that have taken place over decades at locations around the world.

> Past Meetings

2025 19th International Conference on Thermochronology, Kanazawa, Japan
2023 18th International Conference on Thermochronology, Riva del Garda, Italy
2021 17th International Conference on Thermochronology, Santa Fe, USA (some archived content at ESSOAr)
2018 16th International Conference on Thermochronology, Quedlinburg, Germany (some archived content at ESSOAr)
2016 15th International Conference on Thermochronology, Maresias, Brazil
2014 14th International Conference on Thermochronology, Chamonix-Mont Blanc, France
2012 13th International Conference on Thermochronology, Guilin, China
2010 12th International Conference on Thermochronology, Glasgow, U.K.
2008 11th International Conference on Thermochronology, Anchorage, USA
2006  European Workshop on Thermochronology, Bremen, Germany
2004 10th International Workshop on Fission Track Thermochronology, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2002 European Workshop on fission track analysis: Theory and Applications, Cadiz, Spain
2000 9th International Workshop on Fission Track Thermochronology, Lorne, Australia
1996 8th International Workshop on Fission Track Thermochronology, Ghent, Belgium
1992 7th International Workshop on Fission Track Thermochronology, Philadelphia, USA
1988 6th International Fission Track Dating Workshop, Besançon, France
1986 5th International Fission Track Dating Workshop, 6th ICOG, Cambridge, UK
1984 4th International Fission Track Dating Workshop, Troy, USA
1982 3rd International Fission Track Dating Workshop, 5th  ICOG, Nikko, Japan
1980 2nd Fission Track Dating Workshop, Pisa, Italy
1978 Fission Track Dating Workshop, 4th ICOG, Aspen, USA