Dear corpora-list members,

We are pleased to announce the 15th Joint Conference on Lexical and 
Computational Semantics (*SEM 2026), co-located with ACL 2026. The call for 
papers can be found here<https://starsem2026.github.io/calls/> and below.

*SEM 2026: The 15th Joint Conference on Lexical and Computational Semantics 
[San Diego, CA (Co-located with ACL 2026)]

Website: https://starsem2026.github.io/

Direct submission link:  https://openreview.net/group?id=STARSEM/2026/Conference

*SEM brings together researchers interested in the semantics of natural 
languages and its computational modelling. The conference embraces a wide range 
of approaches including data-driven, neural, probabilistic and symbolic; 
practical applications as well as theoretical contributions are welcome. The 
long-term goal of *SEM is to provide a forum for NLP researchers working on any 
aspect of natural language semantics.

*SEM invites submissions related to the computational modelling of natural 
language semantics (understood broadly) and its application. Relevant areas 
include (but are not limited to) theoretical aspects of computational 
semantics, empirical and data-driven approaches, resources, evaluation, and 
applications/tools.

*SEM encourages authors to consider ethical aspects of their work, and to 
address and discuss ethical questions and implications relevant to their 
research. *SEM also values reproducibility and particularly welcomes 
submissions that adhere to the reproducibility guidelines as specified here.

Please fill out this form<https://forms.gle/634oW3yvtTkur6qL9> if you would 
like to volunteer as a reviewer or as an Area Chair.

Questions may be directed to: 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>

New for *SEM 2026
1. One Day Conference: Unlike past iterations, *Sem 2026 will be a one-day 
conference. (ACL has informed us that this is due to venue size limitations.)

2. Centering Research Questions: Research questions in *Sem, and NLP generally, 
can be roughly categorized into those that address:

  *   new findings about language (linguistic phenomena, semantic patterns),
  *   new findings about people (language use, behavior, health, ethics, etc.),
  *   new findings about automatic language processing (advancing language 
understanding through ML/AI and other approaches).

Centering and explicitly articulating the research question helps authors frame 
and present their contribution more clearly. It also helps reviewers and Area 
Chairs evaluate the work within the appropriate context. For example, a paper 
that centers a compelling linguistic or behavioral research question and offers 
meaningful new insights need not also introduce methodological novelty or rely 
on the latest models (including LLMs). A simple and interpretable approach may 
make good sense.

To support this, the *SEM 2026 submission form asks authors to explicitly 
identify the predominant research question type for their work, as well as any 
additional categories that apply. There are no quotas for accepted papers of 
different types, and submissions will not receive preferential treatment based 
on category selection.

Including this information also allows *SEM to track the kinds of research 
questions authors pursue and how the conference’s focus evolves over time.

3. Lasting Impact

Modern NLP and ML papers have often been criticized for being overly 
incremental or becoming obsolete shortly after publication. To encourage work 
with broader scientific value and longer-term relevance, reviewers of *Sem 2026 
will be asked to explicitly assess the potential lasting impact of each 
submission. This assessment will be included as a short-written justification 
and will factor into the overall recommendation.

Importantly, a healthy research ecosystem requires diversity in the time 
horizons of research contributions. Some papers offer immediate practical 
value; others generate insights or resources whose importance unfolds over 
years. *Sem 2026 welcomes this full spectrum. Reviewers should evaluate the 
potential for lasting influence—not only immediate performance gains.

Work can have a lasting impact in many ways. See our blog 
post<https://starsem2026.github.io/blog/> on this.
Topics of Interest (non-exhaustive)

  *   Compositional semantics and sentence representations
  *   Statistical, machine learning, and deep learning methods in semantic tasks
  *   Multilingual and cross-lingual semantics
  *   Word sense disambiguation and induction
  *   Sentiment Analysis, Computational Affective Science, Stylistic Analysis, 
and Argument Mining
  *   Computational Social Science, Digital Humanities, and Cultural Analytics
  *   Semantic parsing, and syntax-semantics interface
  *   Frame semantics and semantic role labeling
  *   Textual inference, textual entailment, and question answering
  *   Formal approaches to semantics
  *   Extraction of events and of causal and temporal relations
  *   Entity linking, pronouns and coreference
  *   Discourse, pragmatics, and dialogue
  *   Machine reading
  *   Abusive language detection, Fact verification and related tasks
  *   Extra-propositional aspects of meaning
  *   Multiword and idiomatic expressions
  *   Metaphor, irony, and humor processing
  *   Knowledge mining and acquisition
  *   Common sense reasoning
  *   Language generation
  *   Multidisciplinary research on semantics
  *   Grounding and multimodal semantics
  *   Psycholinguistics
  *   Interpretability and Explainability
  *   Human semantic processing
  *   Semantic annotation, evaluation, and resources
  *   NLP Applications
  *   Ethical aspects and bias in semantic representations

Submission Instructions


Submissions must describe unpublished work and be written in English. We 
solicit both long and short papers. Long papers describe original research and 
may consist of up to eight (8) pages of content, plus unlimited pages for 
references. Appendices are allowed after the references, but the paper should 
be self-contained, and reviewers will not be required to check the appendices, 
if any. Final versions of long papers will be given one additional page of 
content (up to 9 pages) so that reviewers' comments can be taken into account. 
Short papers describe original focused research and may consist of up to four 
(4) pages, plus unlimited pages for references. Upon acceptance, short papers 
will be given five (5) content pages in the proceedings. Authors are encouraged 
to use this additional page to address reviewers' comments in their final 
versions.


Limitations and Ethics Statement sections are allowed and encouraged but are 
not mandatory. These sections should be placed after the conclusion and will 
not count towards the overall page limit.


Submissions should follow the ARR formatting 
requirements<https://github.com/acl-org/acl-style-files>.


Submission routes and deadlines

*SEM solicits direct submissions (not through ARR). The deadline for direct 
submissions is Feb 13, 2026, and these submissions will be reviewed by the 
*SEM2025 program committee. Submissions are made through OpenReview.



Multiple submission policy

*SEM does not prohibit the submission of work that is under consideration for 
another venue at the same time as the *SEM review period. However, authors of 
such papers will be asked to declare this at submission time.

Important Dates
(All deadlines are 11:59pm UTC-12h, AoE)
Direct submission deadline (long & short papers): Feb 13, 2026
Notification of acceptance: May 5, 2026
Camera-ready deadline: May 26, 2026
Conference date: July 6, 2026 (co-located with ACL 2026)

Following the ACL and ARR 
policies<https://www.aclweb.org/portal/content/report-acl-committee-anonymity-policy>,
 there is no anonymity period requirement.


Best regards,
The *SEM 2026 Program Chairs




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