The Iberian Cosmology meetings were born at a dinner chat between Maria Beltrán and Carlos Martins, during the Moriond 2006 Cosmology session. They were inspired by the UK Cosmology Meetings, and are therefore informal and without registration fees. The shorter name IberiCos was first introduced in 2008, and is due to José Pedro Mimoso.
The first meeting was held in Porto on the 1st and 2nd of December 2006. With the exception of the second meeting (which lasted one day and was included in a larger conference) they were initially two-day independent meetings, but their growing popularity meant that a three-day format was adopted, starting in 2010.
The visibility of the meetings has grown beyond Portugal and Spain, and at present a significant fraction of the participants has no professional or personal connection to either country. Some basic statistics of the meetings are the following:
| Edition | Participants |
| Porto’06 | 32 |
| Bilbao’07 | 26 |
| Lisbon’08 | 50 |
| Madrid’09 | 47 |
| Porto’10 | 47 |
| Salamanca’11 | 47 |
| Lisbon’12 | 89 |
| Granada’13 | 59 |
| Aveiro’14 | 52 |
| Aranjuez’15 | 70 |
| Vila do Conde’16 | 65 |
| Valencia’17 | 64 |
It is also noteworthy that a large fraction of the participants are junior researchers (PhD or younger students). They contribute to the lively atmosphere but also provide a much larger fraction of the talks than in other meetings (as there are no parallel sessions, or posters). Analogous statistics for the talks are as follows:
| Edition | Number of talks |
| Porto’06 | 23 |
| Bilbao’07 | 5 |
| Lisbon’08 | 35 |
| Madrid’09 | 27 |
| Porto’10 | 35 |
| Salamanca’11 | 28 |
| Lisbon’12 | 49 |
| Granada’13 | 45 |
| Aveiro’14 | 35 |
| Aranjuez’15 | 57 |
| Vila do Conde’16 | 51 |
| Valencia’17 | 42 |
The meetings are open to cosmologists in the broadest sense, from theoretical particle physics to observational astrophysics. The sessions are usually organised around common themes, and sometimes include guided discussions.
The idea behind these meetings was also adopted by the asteroseismology, gravitational waves, and string theory communities, all of which have in more recent years started to organise their own Iberian meetings.
