The organisers invite proposals for Special Sessions that bring together researchers and practitioners around focused questions, emerging directions, concrete challenges, or field-level issues in eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI). We welcome proposals from academia, industry, public organisations, and mixed teams, and strongly encourage organising teams that bring together complementary perspectives from different institutions.

Important: all papers submitted to Special Sessions will go through the main track’s central peer-review process. Special Session organisers do not run a separate peer-review process. Organisers may submit papers to their own accepted session; conflicts of interest will be handled by the Programme Committee Chairs, and organisers will not meta-review their own papers.

Marina Höhne and Francesco Sovrano
Special Sessions Coordination Chairs

Special Session categories

Proposals must be submitted under one of the following three categories. All three are part of the conference’s Special Sessions programme (and are therefore reviewed through the main track’s central peer-review process), but each serves a different purpose.

Special session: Thematic

Thematic Special Sessions focus on a clearly defined XAI research problem, question, or emerging direction. They should be specific enough to create a coherent scientific conversation, while broad enough to attract varied contributions and meaningful interaction. Proposals framed around an entire XAI sub-domain should be narrowed to a more concrete scope.

Special session: Challenge-Oriented

Challenge-oriented Special Sessions are organised around a concrete XAI problem, dataset, benchmark, shared task, or hackathon. They may be proposed by academic researchers, industry partners, public organisations, or mixed teams. Challenge proposals should make the following elements explicit:

• The concrete problem, dataset or benchmark, and the expected output from participants.
• The evaluation criteria, submission format, and any leaderboard or challenge platform to be used (e.g., AIcrowd).
• The prize or recognition for the winner(s), including its form and sponsoring organisation. All challenges will include a conference recognition, such as an official winner tag, plaque or framed certificate, presented during an award ceremony alongside other conference distinctions such as the Best Paper Awards. Additional prizes may also be offered, for example cash awards, credits, in-kind support or other forms of recognition. These do not need to have substantial monetary value, although a more attractive prize may help increase participation.
• Session format: the planned structure for running the challenge, including expected participant workflow, key stages or milestones, and any associated conference-session activities.
• Follow-up and dissemination: how the challenge outcome will be documented, edited, and shared after the conference, including who will be responsible, the approximate timeline, and expected authorship.

Important: any conference papers associated with the challenge are reviewed exclusively through the main track’s central peer-review process. Special Session organisers have no role in assigning, reviewing, or making acceptance decisions on those papers. Industry partners are particularly welcome to define or sponsor public challenges. Challenge-oriented proposals will be assessed on the concreteness and feasibility of the task, the appropriateness of the evaluation plan, the connection to conference contributions, and the credibility of any stated prize or sponsorship.

Special Session: Field-Defining

Field-defining Special Sessions address foundational XAI questions for which terminology, definitions, evaluation practice, methodological boundaries, or community standards remain unsettled. Examples include the relationship between explainability and interpretability, the place of mechanistic interpretability within XAI, evaluation standards, or mismatches across XAI communities. These sessions should be designed to produce a concrete community-facing outcome rather than only to collect papers. Field-defining proposals should make the following elements explicit:

• Field-defining question: the foundational question, disagreement, or lack of standardisation to be addressed; why it matters for XAI; and why the issue is timely.
• Representation: the research communities, methodological perspectives, or stakeholder groups that need to be represented, and how the organisers will avoid a single-group viewpoint.
• Session format: the planned structure for reaching a substantive outcome, such as short position statements, moderated panels, breakout groups, structured comparisons, or consensus-building exercises.
• Concrete outcome: the intended community-facing deliverable, such as shared definitions, guidelines, a taxonomy, evaluation recommendations, a position or consensus statement, or a research agenda.
• Follow-up and dissemination: how the outcome will be documented, edited, and shared after the conference, including who will be responsible, the approximate timeline, and expected authorship.

Assessment will consider the field-level importance and maturity of the question, feasibility of the session format, and likelihood of producing and disseminating the stated outcome.

Role of Special Session organisers

Organising a Special Session is intended to provide a visible focal point for a research topic or community without requiring (in any way) organisers to manage a separate review process. Organisers are expected to shape the scientific scope of the session, promote it actively within relevant networks, and help the conference reach communities that may currently be more active in neighbouring venues. Each proposal must therefore include a Community Outreach Commitment identifying 9+ relevant labs, research groups, or authors whom the organisers will personally make aware of the call. This is an outreach commitment, not a commitment to secure submissions, and the list may include the organisers’ own research groups. Researchers considering a proposal may contact the Special Sessions Committee Chairs in advance for guidance on scope and feasibility.

Coordination, session viability, and attendance

Where proposals substantially overlap, the conference may work with organisers to narrow their scope, coordinate related proposals, merge complementary sessions, or split an overly broad proposal into more focused sessions. Important:

• If fewer than four papers are accepted for a particular Special Session, the conference organisation, together with the Special Sessions Committee Chairs, may merge it with a compatible session.
• A minimum of three accepted papers is required for a challenge-oriented session to retain its status. If this minimum is not reached, the session will lose its challenge-oriented status, no prize will be awarded, and the session will be merged with a thematic session.

All presentations associated with Special Sessions are expected to be delivered in person. At least one Special Session organiser must attend the conference in person and chair the session. In cases of visa-related difficulties affecting an author or organiser, a proxy presenter should be identified to attend the conference in person and present the paper.

Organising team requirements

The organising team of a Special Session must include at least one member who holds a PhD. The team should also demonstrate sufficient seniority, research or professional standing, and community reach to credibly lead the session. Evidence may include research impact (in the specific themes targeted by the session), citation profile, h-index, community leadership, industry visibility, and a demonstrated ability to mobilise a research network; no single indicator is intended as a rigid threshold.

What to submit

All proposals must be submitted through the official Special Sessions submission form. Proposers will first provide information common to all Special Sessions and will then provide the additional information required for the selected category.

Information required for all proposals

• Proposed Special Session title.
• An abstract describing the proposed Special Session and its clear link to XAI (maximum 500 words).
• A list of organisers, including their affiliations, Google Scholar URLs, profile pictures, institutional logos, and relevant project logos where applicable.
• A short description of the target community.
• A Community Outreach Commitment identifying at least 9 relevant labs, research groups, or authors whom the organisers will personally make aware of the call.

Additional information for Special Session: Thematic

• A short statement identifying the central research problem, question, or emerging direction and the intended scope of the session.
• A detailed bullet-point list of proposed topics, with concrete examples of applications of existing XAI methods and/or potential directions for developing new XAI methods.

Additional information for Special Session: Challenge-Oriented

• The concrete problem, dataset, benchmark, shared task, or hackathon, and the expected output from participants.
• The challenge-specific evaluation criteria, submission format, and any leaderboard or challenge platform to be used.
• Prize or recognition (optional): specify any proposed prize or recognition for the winner(s), including its form and sponsoring organisation. If left unspecified, the default will be an official award presented during the conference closing ceremony.
• The planned challenge format, including participant workflow, key stages or milestones, and any associated conference-session activities.
• How the challenge outcome will be documented and shared after the conference, including responsibility, approximate timeline, and expected authorship.

Additional information for Special Session: Field-Defining

• The field-defining question: the foundational question, disagreement, or lack of standardisation to be addressed; why it matters for XAI; and why the issue is timely.
• Representation: the research communities, methodological perspectives, or stakeholder groups that need to be represented, and how the organisers will avoid a single-group viewpoint.
• Session format: the planned structure for reaching a substantive outcome.
• Concrete outcome: the intended community-facing deliverable, such as shared definitions, guidelines, a taxonomy, evaluation recommendations, a position or consensus statement, or a research agenda.
• Follow-up and dissemination: how the outcome will be documented, edited, and shared after the conference, including who will be responsible, the approximate timeline, and expected authorship.

Submission and timeline

Proposal submission deadline	November 1, 2026
Submission form
Notification of acceptance and final instructions	November 16, 2026

All Special Session proposals will be assessed after the submission deadline. To ensure that proposals are handled consistently, submissions will be accepted only through the official Special Sessions submission form.