The ICFRM-20, organized by CIEMAT and the University of Granada, concluded with a closing ceremony led by Dr. Angel Ibarra, the event’s General Chair and Director of the IFMIF-DONES Consortium, and accompanied by all the members of the Local Organizing Committees and the technical managers. At the end of the ceremony, it was announced that ICFRM-21 international conference will be held in October 2023 in Granada.

At the closing ceremony, the General Chair thanked the members of the Local Organizing Committee for their valuable dedication in these particularly difficult circumstances. The General Chair also thanked the Online Conference Support Committee from CIEMAT, in charge of the management of the digital platform, who provided their experience and IT expertise, and Viajes El Corte Inglés Granada, MeetMaps and Anhel Productions. Without their daily efforts the ICFRM-20 and its live connection would have not been possible.

A total of 405 people from 30 countries participated at the 20^th edition of the ICFRM, celebrated online due to covid-19, and which was sponsored by IFMIF-DONES and Empresarios Agrupados. This attendance, comparable to that achieved in past face-to-face ICFRM editions, is a triumph considering the difficulties due to the pandemic. In this respect, the hosts thanked the participants for their loyalty to the conference series.

Of the 467 accepted papers, 112 were oral presentations of up to 40 minutes of duration. The digital platform enabled one-hour sessions for scientific discussion between the authors and the public. This was appreciated by the attendees, being impossible to organise such discussion sessions during classic face-to-face events. A good number of poster contributions were also open to discussion at virtual rooms organized by the authors.

Discussions were opened on the Role of Women in Fusion, led by Dr. M.J. Caturla (UA, Spain) and by Dr. Iole Palermo (CIEMAT, Spain). PhD student D. Dario Cruz led the session “The Future of Fusion Education and Training Through the Lens of EUROfusion and FuseNet” in which Guido Lange, the EUROfusion Training and Education Manager, participated.

As has become traditional, the host awarded three prizes to the best student poster presentations, which included a diploma and 400 euros. Out of the 53 candidates nominated for this year’s edition, the winners were Ms. Kateryna Poleshchuk (SCK CEN and Ghent University, Belgium), Mr. Yuki Jimba (Tohoku University, Japan), and Mr. Zhiwei Hu (CNRS, France).

Due to the special circumstances in which this edition took place, the IAC resolved during its meeting on Wednesday 27 October to give Spain the opportunity to host the next ICFRM. During the closing of the event, Prof. Ángel Ibarra handed over the baton to Prof. María José Caturla (Professor of Applied Physics at the University of Alicante), as General Chair of ICFRM-21, formally announcing that it will be held in October 2023 in Granada.