ICML 2026 Workshop on Efficient Multimodal Question Answering (EMM-QA)

Efficient multimodal question answering in the era of large language models

The ICML 2026 Workshop on Efficient Multimodal Question Answering (EMM-QA) invites submissions on methods, resources, evaluations, and systems for question answering over multimodal inputs under realistic resource constraints. The workshop focuses on balancing answer quality with efficiency in modern QA systems, especially in the age of large language models.

Workshop Schedule

Is available at the workshop website.

Website and Contact

• Contact email: emm-qa-organizers@googlegroups.com
• Workshop website: https://qanta-org.github.io/competition/2026/icml/

Please check the workshop website for updates, submission instructions, FAQs, and final shared-challenge details.

Important Dates

All deadlines are Anywhere on Earth (AoE).

Submissions are open now. We are offering an early feedback round for authors who want comments before the later deadline, while keeping the original later round in place for workshop papers and especially shared-system submissions.

In general, we expect the first deadline to be used more often for general workshop submissions and the second deadline to be used more often for system description papers, but authors may submit to either deadline.

Paper Track

• Round 1 submission deadline: May 8, 2026
• Round 1 notification date: May 15, 2026
• Round 2 submission deadline (especially for shared systems): May 29, 2026
• Round 2 review deadline: June 7, 2026
• Round 2 notification date: June 10, 2026
• Camera-ready deadline: June 22, 2026

Shared Challenge

• Warmup data release: May 22, 2026
• Test data release: June 1, 2026
• Challenge metric / scoring feedback deadline: June 1, 2026
• Last system submission: June 15, 2026
• System Description Paper Submission: June 22, 2026
• In-person human competition: June 27, 2026
• Online human competition: June 28, 2026

Workshop Date and Venue

• Workshop date: July 11, 2026, The COEX Convention and Exhibition Center, Seoul, South Korea

Topics of Interest

We welcome submissions on topics including, but not limited to:

• large language models for question answering
• open-domain QA under resource constraints
• efficient retrieval and answer lookup
• multimodal question answering
• synthetic data generation for efficient QA
• balancing accuracy against model and system size
• token-efficient and compute-efficient QA systems
• multimodal retrieval and reasoning for QA
• benchmarking and evaluation for efficient multimodal systems
• human verification and evaluation of QA outputs
• efficiency in human-computer interaction
• efficient inference for knowledge-intensive multimodal tasks
• system descriptions, negative results, and position papers relevant to efficient QA

The scope is intentionally medium-broad: the workshop is centered on efficient multimodal QA, while also welcoming closely related work on multimodal retrieval, reasoning, evaluation, and benchmarking when clearly connected to QA or other knowledge-intensive multimodal tasks.

Guidelines for Submission

Submission Categories

We invite the following types of submissions:

• full papers
• short papers
• position papers
• system description papers
• previously published or recently accepted work as non-archival submissions

Papers accepted at ICML 2026 may be submitted as fast-track submissions. Fast-track submissions must include the acceptance decision and reviews from ICML. They will still be evaluated by the Area Chairs (ACs) and Program Chairs (PCs) for thematic fit.

We do not plan to accept extended abstracts or poster-only submissions without a paper.

Formatting

• Submission platform: OpenReview
• Review model: double-blind
• Paper format: ICML style
• Full paper length: up to 8 pages of main content
• References: excluded from the page limit
• Appendices: excluded from the page limit
• Supplementary material: allowed and may be considered during review

Review Process

• Each submission will receive 3 reviews
• Reviews will consider novelty, relevance to the workshop, clarity, technical quality, and discussion value
• Preliminary but promising work is welcome
• Desk rejection is possible for submissions that are out of scope, non-anonymized, or non-compliant

Archival Policy

Submissions may be archival or non-archival, based on the preference of the authors.

All archival papers will be published in:

• OpenReview
• the workshop website

Non-archival papers may be submitted to any venue in the future, and we will only link to a preprint if the authors provide such a link.

Archival submissions

The following submissions are eligible to be archival:

• newly submitted workshop papers
• newly submitted system description papers

Non-archival submissions

The following submissions are non-archival:

• previously published papers
• recently accepted conference papers
• papers accepted to the main conference and presented again at the workshop
• work currently under review elsewhere
• any submission explicitly designated as non-archival

Non-archival submissions are welcome for presentation and discussion at the workshop, but they will not be published in proceedings of the workshop.

Conflict of Interest Policy

Workshop organizers will not submit papers.

Program committee members and reviewers may submit papers, but they may not review, handle, or make decisions on submissions for which they have a conflict of interest. Conflicts include recent collaboration, shared institutional affiliation, advisor-advisee relationships, family or close personal relationships, or any other circumstance that could impair objective judgment. Conflicted submissions will be handled by non-conflicted organizers and reviewers.

About the Shared Challenge

EMM-QA 2026 will host the QANTA 2026 shared challenge, a multimodal quiz bowl competition on efficient question answering with incrementally revealed clues.

In QANTA 2026, systems answer pyramid-style questions from streaming text and, for some questions, accompanying images. For computer teams, the core task is to decide when to buzz, produce an answer, and express confidence under realistic efficiency constraints. The challenge is closely aligned with the workshop’s focus on efficient multimodal question answering, retrieval, reasoning, and evaluation.

The shared challenge includes both computer-team submissions and related live human competition events. The key challenge deadlines listed above are the warmup data release, test data release, challenge metric / scoring feedback deadline, last system submission, and system description paper submission. The live human competition will take place on June 27, 2026 (in person) and June 28, 2026 (online).

Detailed task definitions, rules, scoring, technical requirements, and participation instructions are available on the following pages:

• Computer Teams — how to build and submit systems
• Human Teams — how to register for the live human competition
• Rules overview — high-level competition structure
• Computer rules — official rules for submitted systems and leaderboard scoring
• Human rules — official rules for live human–AI gameplay
• Prizes and awards — prizes across competition tracks

Poster Sessions

The workshop posters must be portrait to fit two per board.

• Poster dimensions: 91cm (H) x 61cm (W) or 36in (H) x 24in (W)
• These dimensions differ from the main conference

Workshop poster sessions will differ from previous years due to restrictions on the facilities in Seoul. Instead of displaying posters within individual workshop rooms, all poster sessions for all workshops will be held in a single, large shared space (similar to the main conference).