Call for Contributions

Call for ALL Papers

The 20th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys 2026), the leading conference for research on the foundations and applications of recommendation technologies, will take place from September 28 to October 2nd, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

We look forward to receiving your contributions for RecSys 2026. Below, you will find the descriptions of different tracks accepting contributions. The “In-Brief” and “Important Dates” sections of the CFP discuss key points of attention for this call. In the rest of the CFP, we provide detailed information that authors should thoroughly review when preparing their submissions.

Main track (handled by the program chairs):

  • Long papers: We welcome high-impact original papers that contribute to all aspects of recommender systems. The paper length should be commensurate with the depth of contribution, comprehensiveness of analyses, and thorough discussion of related work. Each accepted paper will be included in the conference proceedings and presented at the conference. We expect the review process to be highly selective.
  • Short papers: This track is intended for contributions that can be described completely and rigorously within a smaller page limit. These papers should present focused, self-contained research stories supported by experimental validations.
  • Past, present and future papers: To mark the twentieth year of the RecSys Conference, this track encourages papers that consider a broad perspective on how the field has evolved and the challenges and directions that lay ahead.

Other tracks (handled by their respective chairs):

  • Research and Practice Notes (replacing late-breaking results): short presentations of preliminary work, mainly focused on fostering discussions with other members of the RecSys community.
  • Demo: implementations of novel, interesting, and important recommender systems’ concepts or applications.
  • Reproducibility: contributions that discuss several aspects of reproducibility of empirical results, such as new resources or novel evaluation methodologies.
  • Industry: papers that discuss field experiences, deployments, user studies and real-world challenges faced by industry practitioners.

IN BRIEF

The RecSys community values recommender systems’ human and economic impacts as much as the underlying algorithms. Therefore, we invite contributions to RecSys 2026 that cover the full spectrum of recommender system research. As always, we will prioritize the quality and potential impact of the submitted work.

  • Submissions will be handled electronically via EasyChair. The abstracts are due by April 14, 2026, and the papers are due by April 21, 2026.
  • Submissions should be anonymous and will be reviewed by at least three members of the Program Committee and overseen by a Senior PC member. There will be a rebuttal phase during which authors can provide a brief narrative to clarify any misconceptions that may have arisen from the reviews.
  • At the time of submission, information about all authors and authorship order must be established — no changes will be allowed after the review process begins. Moreover, authors must declare conflicts of interest with PC and SPC members before submitting the full paper. Failure to declare COI can result in desk-rejection.
  • RecSys 2026 has a no dual submission policy, which means submitted manuscripts must not be under review at another publication venue, including other RecSys 2026 tracks. Submission of the paper to pre-print sites like arXiv is allowed as long as the title and abstract of your paper in the archival platform are distinct from your RecSys submission.
  • Contributions must be self-contained. The main text of the submitted paper is limited to 8 content pages for long papers and 4 content pages for short papers and past/present/future papers (using the ACM 2-column template). Reference pages do not count towards the content pages. Authors are encouraged to submit auxiliary material to enhance reproducibility; or include a link to an anonymous repository for code, pre-registered studies, and dataset information within their paper. Reviewers, however, are not required to review these materials.

Contributions will be reviewed based on their relevance to the RecSys community, scientific rigor, and impact.

At least one author from each accepted submission must attend the conference in person to present their work and participate in the Q&A session. Remote presentations or videos will not be permitted for accepted contributions.

Along with other ACM conferences, RecSys 2026 is moving toward full open access. The Article Processing Charge (APC) is covered if the corresponding author‘s institute is enrolled in ACM Open plan, or the fee has to be paid by the authors before publishing.

IMPORTANT DATES FOR LONG, SHORT, AND PAST/PRESENT/FUTURE PAPERS
Deadlines refer to 23:59 (11:59pm) in the AoE (Anywhere on Earth) time zone.

  • Submission open: March 2, 2026
  • Paper abstracts (main track) due: April 14, 2026
  • Papers (main track) due: April 21, 2026
  • Author rebuttal period for papers: June 4-9, 2026
  • Paper notifications: July 9, 2026
  • Camera-ready due: July 27, 2026 (strict)

IN-PERSON ATTENDANCE POLICY

RecSys 2026 is an in-person conference. All accepted papers to the main conference are expected to be presented in-person. At least one author from each accepted paper must attend the conference in person to present the paper and address audience questions during the Q&A session. No pre-recorded videos will be permitted for Full papers. Papers that are not presented at the conference by an author may be removed from the proceedings at the discretion of the program chairs.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Submitted contributions should focus on original and significant work that provides lasting value. The research should address the theory and/or practice of recommender systems. We welcome contributions that showcase innovative uses of algorithms, novel interfaces and explore the benefits and challenges of applying recommender system technology in real-world applications that impact a broad audience and environment.

Evaluations of proposed solutions or applications must align with the claims made in the paper. Depending on the nature of the contribution, this could include simulation studies, offline evaluations, A/B tests, or controlled user experiments.

Research methods and technical procedures should be detailed enough to allow for scrutiny and reproducibility. In other words, contributions should be self-contained. While we understand that user data may be proprietary or confidential, we encourage the sharing of anonymized and cleaned datasets, along with data collection procedures and code. Hence, to enhance reproducibility, we encourage authors to include in their manuscript, when pertinent, a link to an anonymous repository where they can include for example their code or data. Authors can also submit auxiliary material to enhance reproducibility (e.g., experiment details, proof details, appendixes, and study pre-registration). For this, the authors may refer to Anonymous GitHub. However, reviewers are not obligated to review these materials.

Results should be communicated clearly, and the implications of the findings for RecSys and other fields should be explicitly discussed.

Papers must describe original work that has not been previously published, not accepted for publication elsewhere, and not simultaneously submitted or currently under review in another journal or conference, including the other tracks of RecSys 2026. See this brief checklist to strengthen a RecSys paper, for authors and reviewers.

  • LONG PAPER submissions should report on substantial contributions of lasting value. The maximum length is 8 pages (including figures, tables, appendices and acknowledgements). Reference pages do not count towards the 8 page limit. Each accepted long paper will be included in the conference proceedings and presented in the form of a talk or poster as part of the main conference program. We expect the review process to be highly selective: the acceptance rates for full papers in the past three years were 20-24%.
  • SHORT PAPER submissions are for contributions that can be described completely and rigorously within a smaller page limit. The maximum length is 4 pages for all the technical content, with additional pages for references allowed. Each accepted short paper will be included in the conference proceedings and presented in the form of a talk or poster as part of the main conference.
  • PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE PAPER submissions celebrate the innovation and growth of the community, put forward innovative future applications, or provide material that helps set a future research agenda for the Recommender System community. To mark the twentieth year of the RecSys Conference, this track encourages papers that consider a broad perspective on how the field has evolved and the challenges and directions that lay ahead. We encourage position papers, both qualitative and quantitative historical analyses, reflections on persistent or fleeting trends in the field, and blue sky future agendas for recommender research. The maximum length is 4 pages for all the technical content, with additional pages allowed for references. Each accepted Past, Present, Future paper will be included in the conference proceedings and presented in the form of a talk or poster as part of the main conference.

    • A recorded video presentation of each accepted submission should be submitted within one week after the camera-ready deadline. Recorded video presentations will be disseminated through the ACM Digital Library and other ACM Channels.

    Submissions must be anonymous and should be submitted as a PDF electronically via EasyChair by selecting the “RecSys 2026 Main Track” (link will be provided later).

    The review of manuscripts will follow a mutually anonymous review process, and submissions not properly anonymized will be desk-rejected without review.

    Relevant Areas & Topics

    • Foundations of recommender systems
    • Human-centered and interactive recommendation
    • Explainability, transparency, and user control in recommender systems
    • Fairness, safety, diversity, bias-mitigation, and societal impact of recommender systems
    • Legal and ethical aspects of recommender systems
    • Sustainable and eco-aware recommender systems
    • Recommenders for multi-stakeholder, cross-domain, and multimodal contexts
    • Generative, agentic, and reasoning-based recommendation
    • Conversational, knowledge-based, and context-aware recommenders
    • Recommendation evaluation methodologies and metrics beyond accuracy
    • Recommender systems data, reproducibility, and benchmarking resources
    • Real-world applications, case studies, and deployment insights of recommenders

    FORMATTING

    ACM’s archival publication format separates content from presentation in the Digital Library to enhance accessibility and improve the flexibility and resiliency of our publications. All authors should submit manuscripts for review in a double-column format. Instructions for Word and LaTeX authors are given below.

    • Microsoft Word: Write your paper using ACM’s interim template. Follow the embedded instructions to apply the paragraph styles to your various text elements. The text is in double-column format and no additional formatting is required at this stage.
    • LaTeX: Please use the latest version of the Primary Article Template – LaTeX to create your submission.Start the document with the \documentclass[sigconf,anonymous]{acmart} command to generate the output in a double-column format. Please see the LaTeX documentation and ACM’s LaTeX best practices guide for further instructions, ignoring the single-column instructions. Do not use the “manuscript” option, otherwise the document will not be compiled in double-column, as required. Check the sample-sigconf.tex file included in the template package for a formatting example. To ensure 100% compatibility with The ACM Publishing System (TAPS), please restrict the use of packages to the whitelist of approved LaTeX packages.

    Authors are strongly encouraged to provide “alt text” (alternative text) for floats (images, tables, etc.) in their content so that readers with disabilities can be given descriptive information for these floats that are important to the work. The descriptive text will be displayed in place of a float if the float cannot be loaded. This benefits the author as well as it broadens the reader base for the author’s work. Moreover, the alt text provides in-depth float descriptions to search engine crawlers, which helps to properly index these floats. Please check your template’s documentation for instructions on how to use “alt text”. Additionally, authors should follow the ACM Accessibility Recommendations for Publishing in Color and SIG ACCESS guidelines on describing figures.

    Should you have any questions or issues going through the instructions above, please contact support at for both LaTeX and Microsoft Word inquiries.

    Accepted papers will be later submitted to ACM’s new production platform where authors will be able to review PDF and HTML output formats before publication.

    REVIEW PROCESS

    RecSys follows a mutually anonymous review process. Papers will be reviewed by at least three members of the Program Committee and overseen by a Senior PC member, who will assess submissions based on their relevance, originality, rigor, and the impact of their contribution to the field. Reviewers are also asked to consider the replicability of reported research. Papers that are out of scope, incomplete, or lack sufficient evidence to support their main claims may be rejected without a full review.

    After the review phase and before acceptance decisions, reviews will be shared with the authors and authors will be provided the opportunity to submit a short anonymous rebuttal (500 characters), the sole purpose of which is to indicate any factual errors or misconceptions in reviews. Rebuttals should not include any revision suggestions, new material or responses to the reviews, and doing so will disqualify the rebuttal from being included in the review discussion. Further information will be provided along with the reviews.

    AUTHORSHIP POLICY & CONFLICT of INTERESTS

    Authors are strongly encouraged to carefully review ACM’s authorship policy before submitting their papers. All authors must be listed in the correct order in EasyChair by the submission deadline. Moreover, they should adhere to the Conflict of Interest Policy for ACM Publications. Conflict of interest refers to close personal relationships, continuing collaborations in the past 3 years (e.g., co-author on paper, joint grant), past or current advisor/advisee relationship, and employment at the same institution in the past 3 years.

    The complete author list must be provided by the abstract submission deadline to assist reviewers in identifying potential conflicts of interest. Therefore, no changes to authorship will be allowed for any reason after the abstract submission deadline, and no updates will be permitted for camera-ready versions.

    Please ensure that all authors obtain an ORCID ID, to complete the publishing process for accepted contributions, since, as an ACM conference, we have committed to collecting ORCID IDs from all of our published authors. This helps improve author discoverability, ensure proper attribution, and contribute to ongoing community efforts around name normalization.

    ANONYMITY

    The peer review process is mutually anonymous. This means that all submissions must not include any information that identifies the authors or their organizations. Specifically, authors should not include their names and affiliations and must refer to their previous work in the third person. For example, you could write, “Goethals, Chen and Willemsen (2026) stated that RecSys submissions should be anonymized, which can be accomplished by referring to the authors’ prior work in the third person.” It is also important to avoid providing any other information that could help reviewers identify the authors, such as acknowledgements of individuals and funding sources.

    It is acceptable to explicitly mention the companies or organizations that provided datasets, hosted experiments, or deployed solutions, as long as there is no implication that the authors are currently affiliated with those organizations. Reviewers are instructed not to search for technical reports, pre-prints, or other information about your research. Therefore, it is the authors’ responsibility to ensure that the manuscript submitted does not reveal their identity as the authors.

    PRE-PRINT POLICY

    Please carefully consider pre-print constraints. Any violation of this policy could cause your paper to be desk-rejected.

    An anonymous version of your RecSys submission can be submitted at any time to pre-print sites like arXiv.

    Non-anonymized work having significant overlap with your RecSys submission, posted on any online archival platform before the submission deadline, must be disclosed in the EasyChair submission form. The title and abstract of the RecSys submission must be distinct from your previous version.

    Any non-anonymized version of your RecSys paper cannot be submitted to pre-print sites during the review period.

    USE of AI POLICY

    Authors must follow the ACM Policy on the use of generative AI software tools. If a paper includes material generated by GenAI tools (such as text produced by large language models like ChatGPT), it is essential to disclose the extent and nature of this use in a section titled “Acknowledgments”. This allows reviewers to evaluate the overall rigor of the research methodology. However, the use of AI tools for editing and refining authors’ work—meaning tasks like grammar checks, word autocorrect, and other light editing—does not require disclosure. Authors who choose to utilize GenAI tools are fully responsible for any inaccuracies, biases, plagiarism, and other violations, just as if they had created the content themselves. Submissions that are primarily produced by GenAI without substantial contributions from the authors are prohibited and considered spam. Only humans are permitted to be authors of submitted papers.

    For further details, refer to the ACM Policy on Authorship and the ACM Frequently Asked Questions.

    PLAGIARISM POLICY

    Plagiarism is a matter that as Program Chairs we take very seriously, thus, we check the plagiarism levels of all submitted papers to ensure content originality using an automated tool.
    If a contribution reuses non-original text from a previous publication (for example, the description of an algorithm or dataset), please ensure that the prior publication is cited as the source of that text.

    For questions regarding reusing text or simultaneous submissions, please contact the program chairs at least one week before the submission deadline. For further details, refer to the ACM Policy on Authorship. Papers violating any of the above guidelines are subject to rejection without review and cases may be referred to the ACM Publications Ethics and Plagiarism committee for further action where warranted.

    ETHICAL REVIEW FOR HUMAN-SUBJECTS RESEARCH

    ACM RecSys expects all authors to comply with ethical and regulatory guidelines associated with human subjects research, including the ACM Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. Papers reporting on such human subjects research must include a statement identifying any regulatory review the research is subject to (and identifying the form of approval provided), or explaining the lack of required review. Reviewers will be asked to consider whether the research was conducted in compliance with applicable ethical and regulatory guidelines.

    DESK REJECTION POLICY

    Submissions that do not meet the requirements for anonymity, length, or formatting; violate dual submission policy and/or any of ACM’s policies on use of AI or academic dishonesty—such as plagiarism, author misrepresentation, or falsification—may be rejected by the chairs without further consideration.

    To finalize their submission, authors will be requested to declare conflicts of interest with PC and SPC members. Missing declarations might result in desk rejection.

    Submissions that are clearly out of scope or have no meaningful relevance to the recommender system community may also be desk rejected without being sent for review.

    The ACM Code of Ethics grants Program Chairs the authority to (desk) reject papers that perpetuate harmful stereotypes, employ unethical research practices, or uncritically present outcomes or implications that disadvantage marginalized communities. Additionally, reviewers will be explicitly asked to consider whether the research was conducted per professional ethical standards and applicable regulatory guidelines. Failure to adhere to these standards may result in a rejection. Some concrete examples of violations that may result in desk rejection are:

    • Failures to declare conflicts of interest with PC or SPC members.
    • Any other content after the maximum length of the submission.
    • Wrong template or any attempt to format change to get around the page limit.
    • Authors or their institutional affiliations are explicitly stated or easily discoverable.
    • Links to source code repositories or datasets that reveal, explicitly or implicitly, the identity of one of the authors.
    • Any change to the list of authors (both names and affiliations) after the abstract submission deadline.
    • Double submission to another publication venue.

    ACM’s New Open Access Publishing Model

    Starting January 1, 2026, ACM will fully transition to Open Access. All ACM publications, including those from ACM-sponsored conferences, will be 100% Open Access. Authors will have two primary options for publishing Open Access articles with ACM: the ACM Open institutional model or by paying Article Processing Charges (APCs). With over 1,800 institutions already part of ACM Open, the majority of ACM-sponsored conference papers will not require APCs from authors or conferences (currently, around 70-75%).

    Authors from institutions not participating in ACM Open will need to pay an APC to publish their papers, unless they qualify for a financial or discretionary waiver. To find out whether an APC applies to your article, please consult the list of participating institutions in ACM Open and review the APC Waivers and Discounts Policy. Keep in mind that waivers are rare and are granted based on specific criteria set by ACM. Understanding that this change could present financial challenges, ACM has approved a temporary subsidy for 2026 to ease the transition and allow more time for institutions to join ACM Open. The subsidy will offer:

    • $250 APC for ACM/SIG members
    • $350 for non-members

    This represents a 65% discount, funded directly by ACM. Authors are encouraged to help advocate for their institutions to join ACM Open during this transition period.

    This temporary subsidized pricing will apply to all conferences scheduled for 2026, including ACM RecSys 2026.

    PROGRAM CHAIRS

    For CFP-related questions, please reach out to the RecSys 2026 Program Chairs: .