It was organized by members of the Romanian Academy to promote Byzantine history after the Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.
[6] The sixth congress was supposed to be held in Algiers, French Algeria in October 1939 but was postponed due to the outbreak of World War II.
Leading to the creation of several disparate local and regional Byzantine congresses across Europe after the end of the war.
[8] The sixth congress was held in Paris, France, in July 1948, and all subsequent conferences have been organized by the International Association of Byzantine Studies since then.
[1][9] In 2020 the twenty fourth congress was postponed and moved from Istanbul to Venice in protest of theTurkish Government's decision to reconvert the Hagia Sofia into a mosque.