The 12th International Conference of the Asian Association for Language Assessment (AALA 2026) was held from 18 to 21 September 2026 at the Taipa Campus of City University of Macau (CityU Macau). Marking the first time the AALA annual conference has been hosted in Macau, the event was themed "Human-Centred Assessment, Standards, Innovation and Accountability" and brought together nearly 300 participants from 19 countries and regions.

AALA President Yasuyo Sawaki and Co-President Jason Fan noted that this year's theme highlights the need, amid rapid technological advancement, to re-examine the critical role that "the human" plays in second language teaching, learning and assessment. Professor Liying Cheng, Dean of the School of Education at City University of Macau, and Assistant Professor Jiawei Zhang served as local co-chairs; together with the local organising committee they formed, they coordinated all conference arrangements.

In terms of scale, the conference featured 3 keynote speeches, 4 pre- and post-conference workshops, 36 invited speakers, 125 parallel sessions and 20 poster presentations. It was supported by 12 organisations, including City University of Macau, the British Council, Duolingo English Test, LTTC (The Language Training & Testing Center), ETS TOEIC, Pearson, LanguageCert, Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (Language Testing and Assessment), Language Testing in Asia, the Hong Kong Education and Talent Exchange Association, the Sejong Korean Language Assessment, and the Hong Kong–Macau Zhongyan Institute of International Education.

The keynote speakers included Professor Eunice Eunhee Jang of the University of Toronto, who spoke on learning-oriented assessment and critical AI literacy in the age of generative AI; Professor Xun Yan of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who shared the innovative development of an argumentation-based assessment; and Professor Ying Zheng of the University of Southampton, who drew on multiple empirical studies to discuss learner motivation, teacher professional development and the alignment of examination standards for Chinese as an international language, while calling on teachers to engage as researchers and to bridge research and classroom practice. The pre-conference workshops were led by Professor Dina Tsagari, Dr Gwan-Hyeok Im and Dr Yuanyue Hao, addressing respectively the learning difficulties of students with special needs in assessment, validity argumentation, and the application of deep learning; the post-conference workshop was led by Professor Quan Zhang on item analysis and test equating.

The conference was hosted by the School of Education of City University of Macau, which has long been deeply engaged in educational research, educational testing and assessment, educational psychology, educational technology, teacher professional development and international academic collaboration. The School offers the Master of Education (MEd), Master of Teaching and Research, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Education and Doctor of Education (EdD) programmes, and is committed to nurturing education professionals with an international vision and professional competence. The successful hosting of the AALA annual conference is both an affirmation of the School's academic strengths and a demonstration of City University of Macau's achievements in advancing the internationalisation of higher education and building platforms for international academic exchange, further enhancing Macau's influence in the field of language assessment in Asia.