ACL 2025 Call for Proposals
The Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) hereby invites proposals to host the annual ACL conference in the Europe/Middle East/Africa Region in the summer of 2025. At this time, we seek preliminary draft proposals from prospective conference host cities in relevant regions. Contributors of promising proposals will be asked to provide additional information for the final selection.
ACL 2025 will be organized in collaboration with EACL. The ACL 2025 Coordinating Committee, made up of representatives of the ACL and representatives from EACL, will select the General Chair and the Program Committee Co-Chairs for the conference. Draft proposals should identify Local Arrangements Chair(s), who will work with the General Chair and the Coordinating Committee to develop a detailed conference plan and budget.
To facilitate efficient conference organization and economies of scale, the ACL Office will be centralizing many more tasks than in previous years (e.g. registrations, AV, hybrid hosting platform, venue negotiations, hotel blocks, financial transactions and accounting, etc), with a much less burdensome role for the local team in the conference organization.
In addition, our goal is to make it substantially easier for local teams to make proposals without the heavy overhead and responsibilities that previously discouraged academics from getting involved. We would like to simplify all aspects of the traditional bid process, and make it as easy as scouting for promising locations and offering as much (or as little) as you feel you and your local community can contribute to the conference.
In light of the centralization of conference organization tasks, please note the following changes:
1) Local organizers should not work to engage PCOs, but rather should suggest (but not negotiate) promising locations and/or venues based on your personal experience, publicly available information and/or discussions with local government organizations who work to bring major conventions to localities.
2) Local organizers should not pick specific dates, but rather provide information about feasible and recommended dates, based on such local data as weather patterns, holidays, etc.
3) Detailed financial spreadsheets are not required and the local team will have no financial responsibilities for the conference. Simple contrastive summaries of publicly available pricing are helpful (e.g. typical hotel room costs). In general, the most useful proposal content is a contrastive summary of what you believe to be the pros and cons of the conference and social event venues you believe to be promising.
4) When there are multiple viable proposals for a given conference/year, ACL will consider those not chosen for future dates, if the local organizers are amenable.
== Proposal highlights ==
Preliminary proposals should ideally include the following information:
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Details about candidate venues for the primary conference location -
Please include as much information as possible (from publicly available sources) about capacity and services. If you can, it is good to do a private but non-official walk-through of the space (and take photographs). -
If possible, please list pros and cons for multiple venue candidates. -
Details about hotels, candidate social event venues, and candidate locations for the ACL recognition dinner -
Again, please work from publicly available information, rather than formally approaching venues or any PCOs on behalf of the ACL. -
Information about potential local and regional sponsors -
Please include information about direct contacts within those organizations and degree of likely interest as well as any further particulars about what about our events would interest each sponsor. -
Information about candidate dates, including information about local holidays or events of note that would positively or negatively impact an ACL event -
Please do not enquire about availability with venues, either individually or on behalf of the ACL. -
Information about transportation to the region -
Include distances, durations and representative seasonal costs of trains and typically available flights to major cities in EMEA and further away with representative concentrations of ACL members -
Notes on legal/cultural factors relevant to conference organization -
Please include a candid assessment of openness and potential barriers to ACL's diverse communities. -
Information about general financial factors, such as: -
VAT tax rules and VAT tax rebates -
Any publicly available information about assistance opportunities (financial and logistical) from local or national tourism and convention bureaus. It’s fine to express interest, but please do not apply for these without coordination with the ACL.
No specific template is required for proposal submission. The above information is helpful and should be communicated in the most natural medium, but even a partial survey and assessment of recommended locales and venues will be considered.
== Evaluation ==
Proposals will be evaluated according to the following criteria (in no particular order):
- Experience, flexibility, and creativity of proposed local team
- Local Computational Linguistics community support
- Available local government and industry support
- Accessibility and attractiveness of the proposed locale
- Availability of adequate conference and exhibit facilities for the anticipated number of registrants in the proposed locale, and the quality and adequacy of specific available venues
- Adequacy of accommodation and food services across a range of price categories and close to the conference facilities
- Venue pricing and value, based on post-proposal research and negotiations conducted by the ACL office
- Geographical balance with regard to ACL and EACL region in the decade prior to 2025.
== Background and Important Dates ==
Location information of recent major regionally-relevant conferences:
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ACL: 2022 Dublin, Ireland; 2019 Florence, Italy; 2016 Berlin, Germany; 2013 Sofia, Bulgaria; 2010 Uppsala, Sweden -
EACL: 2023 Dubrovnik, Croatia; 2017 Valencia, Spain; 2014 Gothenburg, Sweden; 2012 Avignon, France -
EMNLP: 2022 Abu Dhabi, UAE; 2018 Brussels, Belgium; 2017 Copenhagen, Denmark; 2015 Lisbon, Portugal -
COLING: 2014 Dublin, Ireland -
LREC: 2022 Marseille, France; 2016 Portorož, Slovenia; 2014 Reykjavik, Iceland; 2012 Istanbul, Turkey; 2010 Valletta, Malta
Important dates
- November, 2022: Call for proposals
- December 15, 2022: Notify intention to submit proposal
- January 21, 2023: Draft proposals due
- Through March 1, 2023: Feedback and questions to proposers
- April 1 2023: Final proposals due
- July 2023: Venue selection and announcement at ACL 2023
For any queries please contact
Emily M. Bender (ebender@uw.edu): ACL2025 Coordinating Committee Chair
Please send notifications of intent and draft proposals to: acl25cc@aclweb.org