Call for Competitions — FG 2026

We invite proposals for competitions to be held in conjunction with the 2026 IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG 2026), which will be held in Kyoto, Japan. The competitions provide a forum for challenging, stimulating, and benchmarking cutting‑edge research in face, gesture, and related visual‑computing tasks. We solicit competition proposals on any topic of relevance to the FG community, especially from emerging directions or novel application domains related to face and gesture analysis.

Interdisciplinary topics relevant to a significant cross-section of the community (e.g., those linking FG to health, accessibility, robotics, human–machine interaction, or social good) are particularly welcome.

Types of Competitions

We envisage at least three possible types of competitions (but are open to creative alternatives):

1. Standard (offline) data‑science competitions – Participants compete to achieve the best performance on a machine learning task of importance to the FG community based on data and clearly defined metrics provided by the organizers of the competition.
2. Live / demo competitions – held in a “science-fair” style at FG 2026, where participants bring interactive demonstrations applying their approaches to real-world problems or specific domains defined by the organizers.
3. Lab to Market / Entrepreneurial competitions – designed to highlight the translation of research outcomes into deployable, real-world solutions. Organizers may design competitions that encourage participants to demonstrate the market readiness, societal relevance, or commercial potential of technologies related to face and gesture understanding. The goal is to bridge research innovation with market validation and showcase pathways from lab to product.

What We Look for in Proposals

Competition proposals will be evaluated by the Competition Chairs. Each proposal will be reviewed for:

• Task selection: Originality, relevance, and interest to the community.
• Evaluation protocol and metrics: Clarity, fairness, reproducibility, and robustness.
• Data and resources: Quality, diversity, annotation, and representativeness.
• Feasibility and logistics: Realistic timeline, infrastructure, and communication plans.
• Engagement and outreach: Strategies to attract participants and foster inclusivity.
• For lab to market competitions, clarity of problem–solution alignment, evidence of real-world relevance, and potential for societal or market impact. Organizer expertise and diversity: Experience and diversity of the organizing team.
• Presentation plan: Tentative schedule and resource requirements for FG 2026.

Proposal Preparation and Submission

Competition proposals (for all types) should be submitted via the official conference submission system by selecting the Competition track: Microsoft CMT service

Please follow the structure of, and adapt, the Overleaf template .

Important Dates (Tentative)

Additional Notes

• Competition organizers may request assistance regarding competition platforms or infrastructure.
• FG 2026 will provide support for poster/demo space/pitch and logistics during the conference.
• Organizers are encouraged to make evaluation code, baselines, and data public at the competition launch.
• Competitions involving sensitive data must address privacy, consent, bias, and legal compliance.
• Competition chairs will coordinate review, selection, and integration into the program.

Contact and Inquiries

For questions or advice (e.g., about platforms or logistics), please contact the FG 2026 Competition Chairs Chirag Raman, TU Delft, The Netherlands and Jyoti Joshi Dhall, Monash University, Kroop AI, Australia.

We look forward to your innovative competition proposals and to showcasing the next frontier of face and gesture analysis!