How the 2026 Landscape Is Organised
Everything in the GESEA world routes back to one structure: ESGE, the European Society for Gynaecological Endoscopy, designs the curriculum and awards the certificates, while a limited network of training centres and official events delivers the sessions. The authoritative public sources are ESGE's own events calendar, where upcoming courses and certification sessions are published, and its centres directory, which lists the delivering institutions.
That architecture explains a quirk that surprises candidates: many perfectly official sessions have little or no web presence beyond a short ESGE calendar entry, with registration handled by e-mail to the local organiser. Dedicated course pages with published dates, fees and online application remain the exception. The practical consequence is that finding a session is easy — read the calendar — but comparing sessions takes more work, because the depth of published information varies enormously between centres.
2026 also illustrates how demand and supply currently sit. Sessions are spread unevenly across the year and the map, cohort sizes are deliberately small to protect assessment integrity, and popular courses fill: at the time of writing, at least one major national society's summer 2026 GESEA course was fully booked. Candidates targeting a specific quarter or region should treat deadlines as real constraints rather than formalities.
Where Level 1 Is Running in 2026
A survey of public listings in early August 2026 shows Level 1 activity across Europe, Türkiye and the MENA region. The picture below is a snapshot, not a register — sessions are added to the ESGE calendar through the year, and the calendar itself is always the version to trust — but it maps the main options a candidate can plan around in the remainder of 2026.
In Western Europe, established centres carry the rhythm: Italy's Naples centre maintains one of the most visible dedicated programmes, with a public course calendar and explanatory content, and the UK's national endoscopy society runs GESEA courses whose recent editions have filled well in advance. In the MENA region, Cairo's centre has an active 2026 programme including a session scheduled for mid-November, reflecting how quickly structured endoscopy certification is being adopted beyond Europe.
In Türkiye, the Ankara training centre listed by ESGE — hosted at a university continuing-education campus and directed by the faculty who have run GESEA sessions there across recent years — has multiple Level 1 certification sessions in 2026, including sessions published on the ESGE calendar in August and September. The centre's November entry is distinctive in format: a 20–22 November programme delivered in English for an international cohort of up to 20, pairing two training days with an officially approved GESEA Level 1 certification session, with published GBP pricing and online application — a combination none of the other listings currently offers in one place.
- ESGE events calendar — the canonical, continuously updated list of official courses and certification sessions.
- Western Europe — established centres, most visibly Naples (dedicated public programme) and the UK national society courses (high demand, early sell-out).
- MENA — Cairo's centre active through 2026, including a mid-November session.
- Türkiye — the Ankara centre with multiple 2026 Level 1 sessions, including the English-language 20–22 November training + certification programme with online application.
Formats, and What Sessions Typically Include
Two formats dominate. Certification-only sessions compress the official assessment — the TESTT theory examination plus the LASTT, SUTT and HYSTT stations — into roughly a day, and assume candidates arrive with the mandatory e-learning complete and their skills already built. Combined programmes precede the same assessment with one to three days of structured, supervised simulator training, which is the more realistic route for candidates without regular box-trainer access.
Inclusions vary more than candidates expect, which is why written confirmation matters. Some centres include in-programme catering; almost none include accommodation or travel. Language of instruction is a genuine differentiator: many sessions run wholly or partly in the local language, and explicitly English-language cohorts are worth identifying early if you are travelling internationally for the course.
Pricing transparency is the other axis of variation. A minority of centres publish itemised fees; most quote on enquiry. Published examples in 2026 range from certification-only fees in the low hundreds of pounds to combined training-plus-certification programmes around the two-thousand-pound mark, before travel. The fee analysis in this cluster's dedicated cost guide applies to every entry on the map above: compare what a fee includes, not just its headline.
How to Choose Between Sessions
Start with verification, because everything else depends on it. Confirm the session appears on ESGE's calendar or is run by a centre in ESGE's directory, and confirm in writing which certificate each route leads to. Only ESGE awards GESEA certification; a session's official status is a fact you check at the source, not a claim you accept from a brochure — a habit this cluster recommends for every certification decision.
Then match format to your actual preparation state. If you have completed the e-learning and have genuine simulator fluency, a certification-only day near you may be the efficient choice. If your endoscopy exposure has been clinical and informal, a combined programme buys the supervised station practice that converts experience into benchmark-ready skill — usually the difference that matters on the day.
Finally, weigh the logistics honestly: total cost including travel, language of instruction, cohort size, the application deadline, and what happens financially if a component needs a retake. A session that publishes its dates, fees, faculty and application process is easier to plan around than one that answers by e-mail — and the discipline a centre shows in its published information is usually a fair preview of the discipline it shows in delivery.
Keeping This Guide Current
Course landscapes rot quickly: sessions fill, dates move, and new entries appear on the calendar mid-year. The survey above was verified against public listings on 3 August 2026 and will be revisited as the year progresses. Between updates, the standing advice holds: treat this guide as the map, and ESGE's own calendar and centres directory as the territory.
Two behaviours protect a 2026 plan. First, confirm dates and availability directly with the organising centre before arranging anything else, and only book travel after written acceptance. Second, work backwards from the mandatory prerequisites — e-learning complete, application submitted before the deadline — so that an available seat is actually usable when you find one.
For candidates weighing the remainder of 2026: seats at small-cohort sessions are a finite resource, autumn sessions carry the year's remaining capacity, and the sessions with published deadlines make planning easiest. Whichever entry on the map fits, the sequence is the same — verify, prepare, apply, and let the certificate document skills that were built properly.