We welcome proposals for the Discovery Challenge of ECML PKDD 2026. Each year ECML PKDD hosts several challenges in order to promote research and evaluate machine learning approaches in real-world applications. The Discovery Challenge is open to academic and industrial institutions as well as to non-profit organizations.
Each selected challenge will have a dedicated session in the conference to present the solutions, and will be invited to submit one paper to the ECML/PKDD workshop proceedings that describes the challenge and the winning solution(s). Moreover, each competition should select and review the two top solutions papers to be submitted to the ECML/PKDD workshop proceedings.
Authors should adhere to ethics guidelines stated HERE .
Submission Deadline
22-03-2026
15-03-2026
Author Notification
30-03-2026
23-03-2026
Start
15-04-2026
End
01-06-2026
Publish Results
15-06-2026
Camera Ready submission
15-07-2026
VIEW OPTIONS
The proposals should cover the end to end organization of a challenge. The proposal should be 2 to max 4 pages and should contain the following information:
Submission site: CMT
Please submit your proposal as: Create new submission and select the track: Discovery Challenge. The Microsoft CMT service was used for managing the peer-reviewing process for this conference. This service was provided for free by Microsoft and they bore all expenses, including costs for Azure cloud services as well as for software development and support.
Discovery Challenge papers (describing the top systems) must be written in English, have a maximum of 8 pages. We suggest the papers be prepared and submitted in the LNCS format (https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines). Springer LNCS Template Download. In case of questions, do not hesitate to contact the Discovery Challenge chairs (mail list below).
Please send your submission through CMT. For further questions and information please contact the Discovery Challenge chairs through the following mailing list: ecml-pkdd-2026-discovery-challenge-chairs@googlegroups.com The Microsoft CMT service is used for managing the peer-reviewing process for this conference.