As we step into an exciting phase for the CHI conference, we wanted to share facts and guidance for authors about the upcoming changes to CHI 2026. The CHI Steering Committee and CHI 2026 chairs goal is to simplify the program and enhance the overall conference experience by boosting engagement, collaborations, and conversations within our community. The restructure of submission types aims to help CHI scale by retaining the papers program as is and by shifting the other submissions towards a ‘pick a presentation format’ track. At the conference, papers will be presented in the morning sessions and all the other tracks move to after lunch. The conference schedule has also been adjusted to a 5-day event (Monday through Friday). Previously, workshops and the doctoral consortium were on the weekend followed by a 4-day conference. This shift also allows for workshops to be more open to attendees and CHI moves to a single registration fee—so there will be no additional fee for participating in workshops.
First, the Papers Program remains consistent to previous years. Submission dates and deadlines have moved around (as they do year over year) and they are posted on the CHI 2026 website. Also as done year after year, the Technical Program Committee aims to streamline and simplify the whole of the process from submission to camera ready. If you’re familiar with the Papers submission program, then there should be no surprises; if you’re not familiar, all the information is posted.
Panels, Interactive Demos, Journals, Student Research Competition also remain similar to previous years. As stated, this content will be programmed into the afternoons and evenings of the conference. Other competitions (Design and Games) won’t be taking place in 2026, as we are focusing on the main conference areas and allowing them to scale accordingly.
Next, Posters and Workshops will have minor changes.
Posters have always provided an opportunity to present new, exciting and nascent contributions, as an extended abstract with a page limit of six pages. We are structuring the call and submission process to allow for a plurality of contribution types to welcome what were other paper contribution types from previous years (e.g., case studies and alt.chi) and welcome in new ones (e.g., systems and open source contributions to name a few). All posters will undergo the same mutually anonymous review with the marked contribution type. As before, submissions will be in the ACM Digital Library and are non-archival so authors can re-use and re-submit the nascent ideas later to peer-reviewed archival venues (e.g., a full paper the next year or at other conferences).
For Workshops, apart from the aforementioned changes, it will be a broader track. Workshops provide a space for collaborative work and discussion on focused HCI topics, including interactive lectures, as well as calls for focused areas for collective perspectives (emerging areas, alt.chi topics, case studies, and the like). For 2026, workshop organizers can choose to run a closed workshop (as done in previous CHIs) where only a select set of individuals will be admitted. Or an organizer can run an open workshop which is available to all CHI attendees to drop in. For example, one could run a workshop with it’s own call for papers and it’s own review process set by the organizers and then host paper presentations open to all of CHI on a select topic or or set of topics. There’s no extra workshop attending fee too, so what a workshop can be has been expanded.
There is a new submission area called Meet-Ups. These submissions should strive to foster community by bringing together attendees with shared interests for facilitated discussions in one session block. Meet-ups offer excellent opportunities for dialogue and diving in on a specific topic and with a submission of maximum three pages can be a great way to formally bring topics into discussion at CHI.
As discussed onsite at CHI 2025, the Doctoral Consortium has been refactored into a new Student Mentoring Program. This student-focused program broadens access to valuable resources for early-career scholars in navigating both the CHI conference and their careers in Human-Computer Interaction. The primary goal of the program is to provide a forum for in-depth research discussions while also fostering an environment where participants can network both with senior mentors and other peers.
In the upcoming weeks, our Technical Program Committee (TPC) will release a FAQ section to address any queries regarding the changes we’re implementing for the 2026 conference. As we move forward, we’ll continue to keep you updated. Together, let’s make CHI 2026 a remarkable experience!
Stay tuned for more updates, and thank you for being part of this journey. If you have further questions or need help deciding where to submit, please contact the TPC directly and your question will be handled confidentially by us.
Heloisa Candello, Pablo Cesar, and Pedro Lopes
Technical Program Chairs of CHI 2026
More context: We, TPC of CHI 2026 (Heloisa Candello, Pablo Cesar, and Pedro Lopes), will implement the changes with the General Chairs (Nuria Oliver and David A. Shamma) with the teamwork and support of the entire CHI 2026 Organizing Committee. We’ve been entrusted with the significant task of launching this new format, and while it’s a hefty responsibility, we are both excited and committed to making it a success. For more historical context, the CHI Steering Committee has outlined these changes at CHI in the past to meet scale and finances. For more information you can read several previous blog posts which detail the plan and rationale for this new structure. [1], [2], [3]