Editorial: Selected papers from the <scp>XXV FIGO</scp> world congress

The XXV FIGO World Congress of Gynecology and Obstetrics was held in Cape Town in October 2025, marking the return of the FIGO World Congress to the Africa and Eastern Mediterranean region, where it was last hosted in 2009. We are delighted to be publishing 12 papers that were considered outstanding among all abstracts presented at the FIGO Congress. These were chosen through a process of shortlisting and voting by FIGO's Scientific Programme Committee, and the authors were then invited to submit a full paper to IJGO. All papers have been subject to assessment by the IJGO Editorial Board and independent peer review. The 12 selected papers cover a wide range of topics from diverse geographic locations. The papers published in this special issue will be made free to read for a limited time after completion, and we hope that this will provide accessibility to a broad readership and encourage submission to FIGO's 26th World Congress. The 26th FIGO World Congress will be held at the Montréal Convention Centre (Palais des Congrès de Montréal) from October 31, 2027, to November 5, 2027, and once again, we encourage researchers to submit their abstracts for consideration. All accepted abstracts will be published in an IJGO supplement. Following the success of our previous congresses, we will be opening the call for abstracts for the 2027 World Congress later in 2026. The Scientific Programme Committee will again select outstanding abstracts and invite these authors to submit a full paper to IJGO. We hope to offer this opportunity to a wider range of authors in 2027, with the intention of making the best research available to the widest possible global audience. IJGO currently achieves over 3 million annual downloads from a wide geographical readership. Readers can pre-register online and monitor official channels to be the first to hear when abstract submissions open at www.congress.figo.org. We look forward to receiving your submissions! The authors declare no conflicts of interest. Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.