The ICDAR2026 Organizing Committee invites proposals for competitions that aim at evaluating the performance of algorithms and methods related to areas of document analysis and recognition.
You are cordially invited to submit a proposal, that should contain the following information:
- Contest title and abstract
- A brief description of the competition, including what the particular task under evaluation is, why this competition is of interest to the ICDAR community, and the expected number of participants
- An outline of the competition schedule
- Description of the dataset to be used, and the evaluation process and metrics for submitted methods
- The names, contact information, and brief CVs of the competition organizers, outlining previous experience in performance evaluation and/or organizing competitions
The following rules shall apply to the accepted competitions:
- The name of competition must be standardized by starting with “ICDAR 2026” (e.g., “ICDAR 2026 Competition on …” or “ICDAR 2026 … Competition.”)
- Datasets used in the competitions must be made available after the end of the competitions. Specifically, the training data and ground truth must be publicly released and there must be a way to evaluate performance on a test set. This could take the form of an evaluation server, or the test data, ground truth, and evaluation script could be made publicly available. In principle, the organizers should submit the dataset to IAPR TC10 or TC11.
- Evaluation methodologies and metrics used must be described in detail so that results can be replicated later. Evaluation scripts must be released afterwards.
- Each competition has to be presented with a poster at a prominent place at the conference venue, and selected competitions will get the chance for an oral presentation in the dedicated session mentioned above.
- Competitions must have a sufficient number of participants to be able to draw meaningful conclusions.
- Reports (full papers) on each competition will be reviewed and, if accepted (the competition ran according to plan, attracted a minimum level of participation and is appropriately described), will be published in the ICDAR 2026 conference proceedings.
- Participants should not have access to the ground-truth test dataset until the end of the competition. The evaluation should be done by the organizers.
ICDAR 2026 Competitions Schedule
- Competition proposal submission due: Oct. 25, 2025
- Competition acceptance notification: Nov. 12, 2025
- Individual Competition Websites are Live: Nov. 28, 2025
- Suggested deadline for competition participants: April 03, 2026
- Initial competition report submission due: April 17, 2026
- Camera-ready paper submission due: May 4, 2026
- Communicate Winners to Chairs: June 22, 2026
- Presentation of results at ICDAR conference: Aug 31- Sep 2, 2026
Submission Guidelines & Inquiries
All proposals should be submitted by electronic mail to the Competition Chairs (Dimosthenis Karatzas – Spain; Srirangaraj (Ranga) Setlur – USA) via: [email protected]
We encourage competition proposals with a solid plan to remain active and challenging for the community over and above ICDAR 2026.
For any inquiries you may have regarding the competitions, please contact us via the above email.