Key Dates and Deadlines

The submission requires a title, an author (authors) and an extended abstract (up to 2000 characters, excluding spaces+ references), briefly describing the work.

The extended abstract can be based either on:

• A single paper (possibly but not necessarily accepted at the main conference )
• The whole doctoral dissertation, including planned work.
• Work-in-progress papers: we welcome submissions from PhD students at early and middle stages of their PhD work. As guideline, we recommend that the submission is structured to explain 1) what the problem is, 2) why it is important, 3) why existing solutions in literature are insufficient, 4) how your approach works, and 5) optionally some preliminary experiments.
• Additionally, we require a supporting letter/email from the student’s supervisor sent to ecml-pkdd-2026-phd-forum-chairs@googlegroups.com .

The purpose is to obtain feedback regarding future plans and technical feedback on the research topic and writing. Note:

• The main criteria for acceptance are 1) that the submission is clearly structured and written in the English language and 2) that it is of sufficient maturity to enable the audience of the PhD Forum to provide constructive feedback.
• Extended abstracts will not be formally published. However, unless the authors opt-out, they will be made publicly available through the conference website.
• First authors must be PhD students 1-3 years into their PhD. Co-authors may include the research advisors, committee members, and other collaborators as needed.
• In case of acceptance, the work will be presented as a poster at the PhD student forum. Also, the few researchers, based on reviewers’ recommendations, will be given the opportunity to provide a short presentation (up to 10 min) followed by a Q&A.
• We will ask each PhD student to participate in the review process.
• In-person attendance is required for the PhD forum, i.e., no remote attendance is possible. Accepted submissions whose authors cannot attend in person will be removed from the final list.