Main Conference Timetable for Authors

Note: all deadlines are “anywhere on earth” (UTC-12)

June 18, 2025
Open Review submission site opens for author registration

June 25, 2025
Open Review submission site opens for paper submission

July 25, 2025
Abstracts due at 11:59 PM UTC-12

August 1, 2025
Full papers due at 11:59 PM UTC-12

August 4, 2025
Supplementary material and code due by 11:59 PM UTC-12

September 8, 2025
Notification of Phase 1 rejections

October 2-8, 2025
Author feedback window

November 3, 2025
Notification of final acceptance or rejection (Main Technical Track)

November 13, 2025
Submission of camera-ready files (Main Technical Track)

January 20-27, 2026
AAAI-26 Conference

Note: Deadlines are track-specific and may differ from those listed above. Track-specific deadlines are listed on their respective CFP.

Main Technical Track: Call for Papers

The purpose of the AAAI conference series is to promote research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and foster scientific exchange between researchers, practitioners, scientists, students, and engineers across the entirety of AI and its affiliated disciplines. AAAI-26 is the Fortieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. As with AAAI-25, the theme of this conference is to create collaborative bridges within and beyond AI. In addition to the bridge theme, we emphasize the importance of AI for social impact and responsible AI. Like the 2025 edition of the AAAI conference, AAAI-26 will feature technical paper presentations, special tracks, invited speakers, workshops, tutorials, poster sessions, senior member presentations, competitions, and exhibition programs, and two other activities: a Bridge Program and a Lab Program. Many of these activities are tailored to the theme of bridges and are selected according to the highest standards, with additional programs for students and young researchers.

Appropriate use of Generative AI by Authors

Authors may judiciously use generative AI tools, such as large language models and image generators, in preparing their scholarly manuscripts. However, authors remain fully responsible for all submitted material, which must comply with the AAAI Code of Professional Ethics and Conduct and the AAAI Publications Policies and Guidelines. Any instances of plagiarism (for example, unattributed or reproduced text), non-existent references, or other violations of the Code will be subject to appropriate sanctions.

Plagiarism and the Use of ChatGPT or similar LLMs Papers that include text generated from a large-scale language model (LLM) such as ChatGPT are prohibited unless the produced text is presented as a part of the paper’s experimental analysis. Note that this policy does not prohibit authors from using LLMs for editing or polishing author-written text.

AAAI-2026 furthermore follows AAAI policy that any AI system, including Generative Models such as Chat-GPT, BARD, or DALL-E, do not satisfy the criteria for authorship of papers published by AAAI and, as such, also cannot be used as a citable source in papers published by AAAI. Authors assume full responsibility for content, including checking for plagiarism and veracity of all text.

Any allegation of plagiarism, whether the result of the use of an LLM or otherwise, which comes to AAAI’s attention will be thoroughly investigated. If substantiated, the matter will be dealt with very seriously.  Possible sanctions include rejection/retraction of the work, notification to all the authors’ institutions or employers and any other relevant bodies, and denial of service for and access to all AAAI-sponsored meetings.

​Summary

• Three technical tracks (Main Track; AI for Social Impact; AI Alignment)
• Two-phase reviewing for the Main Track:
  • Phase 1: Two reviews supplemented by one AI-generated, non-decisional review.
  • Phase 2: Additional reviews for papers not rejected in Phase 1.
  • Author response after Phase 2, only for papers not rejected in Phase 1.
  • Metareview and disposition decision after author response period.
• Submissions may consist of up to 7 pages of technical content plus additional pages solely for references.
• Authors may submit supplementary material, but please note that reviewers are not required to review this material. Any material critical to the evaluation of the paper should be included in the main body of the paper. Three kinds of supplementary material may be submitted alongside all papers: (1) technical appendix; (2) multimedia; (3) code and data. The supplementary material deadline is 3 days after the paper submission deadline.
• All authors must complete a reproducibility checklist to facilitate replication of the reported research.
• All authors are expected to be available to review (light load), unless extenuating circumstances apply.

AAAI-26 is an in-person conference.

Timetable for Authors

Please see the timetable in the sidebar.

 

AI-Assisted Peer-Review Process: Pilot Program

Review processes for AAAI-26 will implement a pilot program for an AI-Assisted Peer Review System. The goal of this pilot is to better understand whether and how AI can be effectively used in the AAAI review process, incorporating author and review feedback to provide lessons learned to the community. AAAI will continue to rely solely on humans for paper decisions, in compliance with the AAAI Code of Professional Ethics and Conduct and the AAAI Publications Policies and Guidelines. The pilot program will provide supplementary information in the form of AI-generated reviews and summaries that do not contain any ratings or recommendations. AI-generated supplementary reviews will not play any formal role in the review process, except being visible to the assigned reviewers (after they submit their own reviews), area chairs, and appropriate members of the Program Committee during the paper discussion phase. In addition, AI-generated summaries of reviewer discussions will also be used to assist Senior Program Committee members in their decision making.

As with previous AAAI conferences, AAAI-26 will follow a two-phase reviewing process.  In previous years, this two-phase process consisted of two reviews of each submitted manuscript during Phase 1 followed by additional reviews for manuscripts selected to continue to Phase 2 review and consideration for acceptance by the conference.  This year, the two human-written reviews in Phase 1 will be complemented by an additional AI-generated review (as a uniquely identified AI-generated Supplementary First-Stage Review). A Senior Program Committee (SPC) member, under the auspices of an Area Chair (AC) and the Program Chairs, will make a decision based on the reviews and human-generated ratings to decide whether the paper proceeds to Phase 2. For papers rejected in Phase 1, authors will immediately be able to see their reviews, including the AI-generated review.

If the paper proceeds to Phase 2, additional human-written reviews will be provided followed by an opportunity for authors to respond to the reviews.  During the author response phase, all reviews, including the AI-generated review, will become visible to the reviewers and the authors. Authors may address their response to all of the provided reviews, including the AI-generated review.  A Senior Program Committee (SPC) member in Phase 2 will make recommendations for paper decisions based on all reviews, the author response, and discussion among the reviewers.  The SPC will have access to AI-generated Discussion Summary Assistance to help highlight key points of consensus and disagreement among human reviewers.

No human reviewers are being replaced by AI reviewing.  No human decision making is being replaced by AI decision making.

Privacy and Data Protection

The AAAI-26 AI-assisted review process will implement privacy controls throughout the pilot, to ensure:

• All paper content and reviewer information will remain confidential,
• No paper content will be used for LLM training,
• Papers will not be repurposed for any use beyond generating the intended reviews and summaries, and
• Complete compliance with all data protection regulations.

Collaborative Bridge Theme

Driven by its disciplinary diversity, AAAI has incubated numerous AI sub-disciplines and conferences, and for decades has nurtured the cohesion of AI. New communities often emerge when two or more disciplines come together in order to explore new opportunities and perspectives; today, both are plentiful. The purpose of this year’s Bridge Program is to tap into new sources of innovation by cultivating collaboration between two or more communities directed towards a common goal. Our interpretation of bridges is broad and encompasses disciplines within and outside of AI. Hence, our Bridge Program is intended to bring together both distinct subfields of AI, such as planning and learning, as well as other disciplines that contribute to and benefit from AI, such as AI and the humanities.

Topics

AAAI-26 welcomes submissions reporting research that advances artificial intelligence, broadly conceived. The conference scope includes machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, data mining, multiagent systems, knowledge representation, human-in-the-loop AI, search, planning, reasoning, robotics and perception, and ethics. In addition to fundamental work focused on any one of these areas, we expressly encourage work that cuts across technical areas of AI (e.g., machine learning and computer vision; robotics and multiagent systems, computer vision and natural language processing; or machine learning and planning), bridges between AI and a related research area (e.g., neuroscience; cognitive science), or develops AI techniques in the context of important application domains, such as healthcare, sustainability, transportation, and commerce.

The set of AAAI-26 keywords is available on the AAAI-26 keywords page. The author’s guide for choosing the best keywords describes important considerations in selecting keywords for a paper.

Most papers in AAAI-26 are expected to be part of the main track. All main track papers will be reviewed according to the same criteria and via the same process. This conference has two special tracks, which focus on AI for Social Impact, and AI Alignment. Papers in the special tracks will be reviewed according to a different evaluation rubric than papers in the main track. The same reviewing schedule will be followed for all papers.

Special Track on AI for Social Impact

As in past years, AAAI-26 will include a special track on AI for Social Impact (AISI). Submissions to this track will be reviewed according to a rubric that emphasizes the fit between the techniques used and a problem of social importance, rather than simply rewarding technical novelty. In particular, reviewers will assess the significance of the addressed problem; the paper’s engagement with previous literature on the application problem (whether in the AI literature or elsewhere); both novelty of and justification for the proposed AI-based approach; quality of evaluation; facilitation of follow-up work; and overall scope and promise for social impact. Further details are available at the AISI page.

Special Track on AI Alignment

The 2026 AI Alignment track seeks research on scalable oversight, mechanistic interpretability, empirical robustness evaluation, red-teaming, human cognitive and psychological factors, and safe-by-design engineering—including formal safety cases. We welcome work on transparent governance frameworks, economic incentives, institutional accountability, human-centered modeling and evaluation, and pluralistic coordination methods that enable AI systems to manage conflicting human values and foster international cooperation through shared evaluation standards. Submissions must state their contributions and relevance to the track clearly; papers that release open datasets, reproducible code, or practical evaluation tools are especially encouraged. Reviewing will emphasize technical correctness, appropriate coverage of related work, and relevance to the track. Further details are available at the AIA page.

Review Criteria

AAAI is a highly selective conference. Prospective authors are therefore strongly encouraged to submit only their very best work to AAAI.

All submissions will be rigorously evaluated by expert reviewers to assess whether the contributions of the paper are substantive enough to warrant publication in AAAI.

The contributions may be theoretical, methodological, algorithmic, empirical, integrative (connecting ideas and methods across disparate subfields of AI), or critical (e.g., principled analyses and arguments that draw attention to problematic choice of goals, assumptions, or approaches).

All submissions will be evaluated and scored for the significance and novelty of the contributions (research problems or questions addressed, methods, experiments, analyses), theoretical and/or empirical soundness of the claims, their relevance to the AAAI community, and clarity of exposition.

Additional considerations include adherence to responsible research practices (e.g., with respect to human subject studies, use of sensitive data, as well as data and algorithmic bias), and of steps to ensure reproducibility of research results (e.g., by providing detailed proofs, documenting experiments, sharing data, and sharing code).

Solid technical papers that explore new territory or point out new directions for research, introduce new problems, address research questions, or introduce methods that are of interest beyond a single sub-area of AI are preferred to papers that advance the state of the art, but only incrementally, or only within a narrow sub-area of AI.

Detailed Instructions

More specific details are on the following pages:

• Submission Instructions
• AAAI-26 Author Kit
• Keywords
• Supplementary material
• Review process
• AI for Social Impact Track
• AI Alignment Track
• Paper Modification Guidelines
• Paper Publication and Conference Attendance
• Affiliated Events

Please send queries about conference registration to aaai26@aaai.org. 

Questions and Suggestions

Inquiries about the submission process and the conference should be sent to workflowchairs26@aaai.zendesk.com. Our team of workflow chairs will directly answer questions or forward as appropriate.