Joint 35th edition of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence: a seven-day academic gathering in Bremen, Germany, drawing an estimated 3,500 to 4,000 researchers across AI, robotics, health AI, and AI for social good.
IJCAI-ECAI 2026 is the joint 35th edition of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) and the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI), organised under EurAI's European umbrella. The event brings together academic researchers, scientists, and practitioners working across the full breadth of artificial intelligence, including robotics, health AI, and AI for social good. Conducted in English, it is held annually and takes place in Bremen, Germany, across seven days in August 2026. The organiser has not been publicly identified as of verification.
The event runs in two distinct phases. The opening three days, 15 to 17 August, host workshops and tutorials at the University of Bremen. The main conference then moves to the Bremen Exhibition Center for the final four days, 18 to 21 August. This two-site structure reflects the standard IJCAI-ECAI architecture, where specialised pre-conference sessions precede the core scientific programme.
Registration categories published on the official site cover full conference delegates, students, participants attending only workshops and tutorials, and those opting for virtual attendance. Pricing for all categories is not publicly disclosed as of verification.
IJCAI has historically rotated its location across continents, making the Bremen edition a rare European staging of the joint conference. ECAI, the conference of EurAI (the European Association for Artificial Intelligence), co-locates with IJCAI periodically, producing a combined edition that draws both the global IJCAI community and the European AI research base into a single gathering. August positions the event squarely within the international academic conference season, ahead of the Northern Hemisphere autumn semester.
No confirmed session names, stage count, special formats, or invited speaker details have been published on the official site as of verification. The programme page lists calls for papers and logistical information only; keynote and invited speaker announcements are described as forthcoming.
The thematic scope of the conference spans the principal areas of artificial intelligence research:
No specific track names, workshop titles, or session themes for the 2026 edition have been confirmed on the official site as of verification.
IJCAI-ECAI 2026 is a peer-reviewed academic conference, not an industry summit or trade event. Participation in the main programme centres on accepted paper submissions evaluated through a competitive double-blind review process. Keynotes are delivered by invited scientists rather than corporate executives. The audience is composed primarily of researchers, not practitioners or investors.
The event is designed for academic and applied AI researchers, including doctoral students, postdoctoral scientists, faculty, and research scientists in industry. It attracts specialists in robotics, health AI, and AI for social good alongside generalist AI researchers. The joint IJCAI and ECAI format means both the global and the European research communities are represented.
Attending IJCAI-ECAI 2026 is unlikely to be productive for several specific profiles. Investors and venture capitalists seeking deal flow or startup pitches will find no structured mechanism for that activity: the event has no pitch sessions, investor matchmaking, or commercial exhibition programme aligned with investment sourcing. Technology buyers evaluating enterprise AI products will encounter a research-oriented programme with minimal vendor presence in the commercial sense. Practitioners seeking immediately applicable implementation guidance, rather than scientific findings, may find the academic paper format a poor match for their objectives. Policy professionals without a technical research background will find much of the main conference programme inaccessible without prior grounding in AI methodology. Finally, professionals based outside academia who need continuing professional development credits or industry certification will find neither offered here.
The Bremen Research Alliance, in a press release, stated an expected attendance of 3,500 to 4,000 participants. No breakdown by category (students, academics, industry researchers, international delegates) has been published as of verification.
The main conference phase of IJCAI-ECAI 2026 takes place at the Bremen Exhibition Center, the city's primary large-format event venue. The workshop and tutorial phase, covering the first three days of the event, is hosted at the University of Bremen, which grounds the opening programme in an academic campus setting. Bremen is a Hanseatic city in northern Germany, with direct rail connections to Hamburg and a regional airport. The dual-site structure requires delegates to move between the university campus and the exhibition centre across the week.
The organiser of IJCAI-ECAI 2026 has not been identified on the official event website as of verification. The website at 2026.ijcai.org is the sole published point of contact and registration. The IJCAI conference series is historically associated with the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence organisation, and ECAI is the conference of EurAI, the European Association for Artificial Intelligence, but no named organising body or local host committee has been confirmed in publicly available sources for this edition.
IJCAI-ECAI 2026 operates under a definition of artificial intelligence rooted in academic computer science: the study of computational agents that perceive their environment and act to achieve goals, encompassing machine learning, logical reasoning, knowledge representation, planning, and natural language processing. "Deep technology" in this context refers to research at the scientific frontier, often pre-commercial, requiring significant time between laboratory result and deployed application. This distinguishes the event's content from applied AI product showcases or commercial AI adoption conferences.
IJCAI-ECAI 2026 is the rare combined edition of the two most established academic AI conferences in the world, and its location in Bremen marks a European moment for a series that travels globally; the event's weight sits entirely in its peer-reviewed programme and the density of the research community it assembles, not in any commercial or networking infrastructure.
Registration is handled through the official conference website at 2026.ijcai.org. Four registration categories are described on the site: full conference registration, student registration (offered at a subsidised rate), workshop and tutorial-only registration (for delegates not attending the main conference), and virtual attendance for those unable to travel to Germany. Pricing for all four categories is not publicly disclosed as of verification. Access to the event is open in the sense that no invitation or institutional accreditation is required to register, beyond meeting the eligibility criteria for the student rate where applicable.
Registration is managed through the official site at 2026.ijcai.org. No separate registration platform or third-party ticketing service has been announced as of verification.
Delegate, student, workshop-only, and virtual attendance pricing are not publicly disclosed on the official website as of verification. The site references four distinct registration tiers but lists no prices alongside them.
A virtual attendance option is listed among the registration categories on the official site. No details about the format of virtual access (livestreaming, on-demand recordings, virtual poster sessions, or digital networking) have been published as of verification.
As of verification, the official site publishes calls for papers and logistical information only. Keynote speakers, invited talks, accepted papers, session schedules, and workshop programmes have not been announced. The site notes that speaker and programme details will be published at a later stage.
| Official website | https://2026.ijcai.org |
| Register | https://2026.ijcai.org |
| Programme | not disclosed |
| Organiser website | https://2026.ijcai.org |