*Cross-Cultural Misogynistic Meme Detection Grand Challenge (CC-MMD) 2026* *Held in conjunction with the 28th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI 2026) Napoli, Italy | October 5–9, 2026* *Website link : https://sites.google.com/view/cc-mmd2026/overview https://sites.google.com/view/cc-mmd2026/overview* *Codabench link: https://www.codabench.org/competitions/14187/ https://www.codabench.org/competitions/14187/*
------------------------------ Online misogyny is increasingly evolving into complex multimodal formats. Memes—the fusion of text and imagery—often leverage humor, irony, and cultural shorthand to mask harmful ideologies. However, what is perceived as misogynistic is rarely universal; it is deeply rooted in local norms, language nuances, and social symbolism. The *CC-MMD Grand Challenge* benchmarks the next generation of culturally robust multimodal systems. We focus on binary misogyny classification across three distinct regions: *Indian*, *Chinese*, and *Western (English)* contexts. This challenge moves beyond single-pool testing to evaluate how well AI generalizes across specific cultural partitions, ensuring that moderation systems are inclusive and reliable for a global digital population. Participants are invited to develop multimodal models that can navigate:
- *Implicit Meaning:* Detecting harm when neither the text nor the image is explicitly toxic in isolation. - *Cultural Grounding:* Interpreting symbols and slang unique to Indian, Chinese, and Western contexts.
*Task & Data*
- *Task:* Binary classification (Misogynistic vs. Non-Misogynistic) of multimodal memes. - *Dataset:* A systematic, cross-culturally annotated dataset featuring multilingual text and diverse imagery. - *Platform:* Competition hosting and data release will be managed via CodaBench *https://www.codabench.org/competitions/14187/ https://www.codabench.org/competitions/14187/*.
------------------------------ *Important Dates*
*Task Announcement*
February 27, 2026
*Release of Training Data*
February 27, 2026
*Release of Test Data*
April 1, 2026
*Run Submission Deadline*
April 20, 2026
*Results Declared*
May 5, 2026
*Paper Submission Deadline*
June 10, 2026
*Peer Review Notification*
July 8, 2026
*Camera-ready Paper Due*
July 23, 2026
https://research.universityofgalway.ie/en/persons/bharathi-raja-asoka-chakravarthi