Call for Multimedia Grand Challenge Proposals

ACM Multimedia (ACMMM) is the premier international conference dedicated to advancing research and applications across diverse multimedia fields. ACMMM 2026 will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 10–14 November 2026.

ACMMM 2026 is calling for Multimedia Grand Challenge proposals. The Multimedia Grand Challenge (MGC) track was first presented as part of ACMMM 2009 and has established itself as a prestigious venue for competition in the multimedia community. The purpose of the MGC track is to engage the multimedia research community by establishing well-defined and objectively judged challenges intended to exercise state-of-the-art methods and inspire future research directions.

Proposers with an innovative idea of an MGC should gather an organizational team with the capacity to carry out the organization of the challenge and submit a proposal according to the instructions below. It is important to emphasise the continuity of the Grand Challenge, which is important to support sustained and substantial progress in the state of the art. We ask that organiser teams who would like to propose Grand Challenges express a commitment to organize their Grand Challenge multiple years in a row.

The key criteria for Grand Challenges are that they should be useful and interesting, and their solution should involve a series of research tasks over a long period of time, with pointers toward longer-term research.

Proposal Requirements

An MGC proposal should include:

• A brief description to explain why the challenge problem is important and relevant to the multimedia research community, industry, and society over (at least) the next 3–5 years.
• A description of a specific set of research tasks or sub-tasks to tackle the challenge problem in the long run.
• An outline of current state-of-the-art techniques and why this Grand Challenge would help accelerate research in this important area.
• Link to sites containing relevant datasets to be used for objective training and evaluation of the grand challenge tasks. Documentation on the datasets should be provided or made accessible.
• A description of rigorously defined objective criteria and/or procedures on how the submissions will be evaluated or judged.
• A commitment to publish and maintain a website related to their specific Grand Challenge containing the information, datasets, and tasks for the Grand Challenge for at least the next 3 years.
• Work with ACMMM Conference organizers to publicize the Grand Challenge tasks to researchers for participation.
• Contact information of at least two organizers who will be responsible for organizing, publicizing, reviewing, and judging the Grand Challenge submissions as described in the proposal.

Note that although we ask organisers to express a multi-year commitment to their Grand Challenge, the Challenge will still undergo a new review each year. Priority will be given to Grand Challenges which have been successful in the past and are clearly contributing to continuity.

Important Dates

• MGC Proposal Submission: 12th February 2026
• MGC Proposal Notification: 5th March, 2026

Submission

Please submit using this OpenReview venue by the due date: https://openreview.net/group?id=acmmm.org/ACMMM/2026/MGC-Proposal

Contact

For any questions, please contact the Grand Challenge Chairs at grandchallenge-mm26@acmmm.org.