IJCAI-ECAI 2026

IJCAI-ECAI 2026 was the joint staging of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, held in Bremen, Germany, from 15 to 21 August 2026. It merged the global IJCAI community and the European research community represented by EurAI into one peer-reviewed academic conference, and returned the series to Germany after 43 years. Local hosts: the U Bremen Research Alliance and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI).

About 3,000 participants from more than 40 countries, an organiser figure published on the conference press page. Largest delegations: China, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Japan. The pre-event projection from DFKI and the U Bremen Research Alliance had been 3,500 to 4,000, so the outturn landed below it. No breakdown by student, academic, or industry category was published.

858 papers were accepted from 6,342 full submissions across all tracks, roughly a 13.5 percent acceptance rate, per the official press page. The main track accounted for 712 of them, with AI for Social Good at 52, AI and Health at 47, AI4Tech at 25, AI and Robotics at 11, and Human-Centred AI at 10. The published accepted-papers listing totals 989 entries, a higher number because it also counts Demonstrations (50), Survey Track (45), Sister Conferences Best Papers (17), Early Career Spotlight (14), and Journal Track (6).

Across two Bremen sites. Workshops and tutorials ran from 15 to 17 August at the University of Bremen (Zentralbereich, Bibliothekstraße 1). The main conference ran from 18 August at the Congress Centrum Bremen, Findorffstraße 101, part of the M3B complex beside Bremen Central Station. Official pages call the main venue both Congress Centrum Bremen and Congress Center Bremen, for the same site.

A general main track plus five special tracks: Human-Centred AI, AI for Social Good, AI4Tech (AI Enabling Critical Technologies), AI and Health, AI and Robotics. Alongside them: a Survey Track, a Demonstrations Track, a Journal Track, a Sister Conferences Best Papers Track, Early Career Spotlights, 14 technical competitions, and a Doctoral Consortium of 17 students from 12 countries. Each accepted paper got a six-minute talk with two minutes of questions, delivered in person by one author, plus a poster in a dedicated session.

44 workshop slots and 25 tutorial slots across the three opening days at the University of Bremen: 13 workshops and 9 tutorials on 15 August, 18 and 6 on 16 August, 13 and 10 on 17 August.

Nine invited and award speakers were published with their talk titles. Award lectures: Nick Jennings (Loughborough University), IJCAI Research Excellence Award, on agentic AI; David C. Parkes (Harvard University), John McCarthy Award, on agent societies; Jiajun Wu (Stanford University), Computers and Thought Award, on visual and physical intelligence through code. Invited talks: Barbara Plank (LMU Munich) on human disagreement in natural language processing, Tinne Tuytelaars (KU Leuven) on visual representations, Jan Peters (Technische Universität Darmstadt) on robot reinforcement learning, Luciano Serafini (Fondazione Bruno Kessler) on neuro-symbolic AI, Jeroen Delfos (European Commission) on the EU AI Act, and Georgina Curto (United Nations University) on global AI initiatives.

Rates were published in US dollars at three deadlines, early, late, and on site. Full conference for IJCAI or EurAI members: 980, 1,150, 1,250. Full conference non-member: 1,030, 1,200, 1,300. Student member: 500, 550, 600. Student non-member: 550, 600, 650. Workshop-only passes ran from 350 for one day to 650 for three at the early general rate, tutorial-only from 275 for a half day to 680 for three days, with reduced student grids for both. Social items were priced separately: banquet 150, opening reception 120, student reception 90, Industry Day 150, Diversity and Inclusion Lunch 15.

No. The official registration page stated that no virtual or hybrid option was offered for any presentation, and every accepted paper had to be presented in person in Bremen by one of its authors. Earlier descriptions of a four-tier registration model including a virtual track do not match the published structure.

The conference operated under the IJCAI Organization and EurAI. Francesca Toni (Imperial College London) was Conference Chair, Diego Calvanese (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano) Program Chair, with local arrangements led by Tanja Schultz and Frank Kirchner (University of Bremen, Kirchner also DFKI) and Monika Michaelis (U Bremen Research Alliance). Sponsorship, published in tiers and last checked on 7 July 2026, was headed by the German Federal State of Bremen and the Lower Saxony science ministry at platinum, the Artificial Intelligence Journal at diamond, and Google, SAP, DeepL, T-Systems, and Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe at gold.

No. IJCAI-ECAI 2026 was a combined staging that does not repeat: the two conferences run separately in 2027. ECAI 2027 is the successor within EMEA, in Athens from 2 to 7 October 2027, organised by EurAI with the Hellenic Artificial Intelligence Society (EETN). The pre-conference programme is set for the School of Science of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens on 2 and 3 October, the main conference for the Megaron Athens International Conference Centre from 4 to 7 October. Sources disagree on the ordinal: ecai2027.org calls it the 28th edition, a EurAI announcement the 30th.

Kyoto, Japan, announced from the Bremen closing session and recorded on the official 2026 press page as 7 to 13 August 2027, with a satellite event on Hengqin Island from 15 to 17 August. That puts IJCAI 2027 outside EMEA. One third-party listing gives 17 to 22 August 2027 instead, and ijcai.org/future_conferences had not been updated at verification, so the dates warrant a re-check once a 2027 site is live.

Full paper submission 14 April 2027, first-phase notification 15 May 2027, rebuttal period 15 to 18 June 2027, author notification 15 July 2027, as published on ecai2027.org, which went live on 18 August 2026.

Investors looking for deal flow: no pitch sessions, no investor matchmaking, no commercial exhibition aligned with sourcing. Technology buyers comparing enterprise AI products: the programme was peer-reviewed research, with Industry Day the only defined commercial touchpoint. Practitioners wanting implementation guidance rather than scientific findings. Policy professionals without technical grounding, who would have found most main-track sessions hard to follow. Anyone unable to travel, since no virtual option existed. Professionals needing continuing education credits or certification, neither offered.