*CALL FOR BIDS TO HOST EACL 2026*

The European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL) invites expressions of interest to host the 2026 EACL conference, to be held in Europe, the Middle East or Africa (EMEA) in Spring (preferably April/May) 2026. The 2026 conference will be the 18th meeting of the EACL. At the same time, we also invite expressions of interest to host the 2027 EACL conference. *At this stage, we seek draft proposals from prospective bidders.* These will be evaluated, and promising bidders will be asked to provide additional information for the final selection. The EACL Board will appoint the general chair for the conference, the programme committee co- chairs, and all other chairs (tutorial co-chairs, workshop co-chairs, etc.), except for the local arrangements chair. Draft bid proposals (due *April 14th, 2025*) should include information on all of the following items:

1. *Proposed dates:* in Spring (preferably March/April) 2026

2. *Location:* city and conference venue. Indicate whether the conference would be held at a university, hotel or convention center. Bear in mind that EACL is growing. While Gothenburg (EACL 2014) had 520 registered participants, Valencia (EACL 2017) had 680 registered participants and EACL 2024 had over 800 participants. So please suggest a location that could host 1000 people for plenary sessions, plus at least 4 conference rooms hosting parallel sessions (200-250 people each), a large poster or exhibit room; 11 rooms on the workshops/tutorials days among which at least two host 200 people and the others 60 persons; and rooms for demos, small meetings and registration.

3. *Local arrangements team:* local chair/co-chair, committee, volunteer labour (e.g. students), registration handling. The local arrangements team will be responsible for activities such as arranging meeting rooms, equipment, refreshments, accommodation, on-site registration, participant internet access, the reception, the conference dinner, and working with the other chairs and the EACL Board to develop the budget and registration materials. Indicate whether a professional conference organizer (PCO) will be involved in the organization. Also, indicate whether any national/regional associations for Computational Linguistics would be on board of the local organization

*The final bids will also include detailed information on the following items:*

1. Computing/wifi/audiovisual: whether there will be desktop/laptop in conference rooms and high-speed wireless Internet access, what the audiovisual facilities are 2. Printing of conference booklet 3. Food catering including breaks, reception, poster sessions and conference dinner 4. Accommodation options at the venue, including low-cost student accommodation 5. Travel alternatives to the venue from Europe and beyond 6. Social events including infrastructure for banquet/other social event and reception 7. Potential for local sponsorships 8. Opportunities for co-location with other meetings 9. The costs related to all of the above items, which should be indicated in the expenses spreadsheet (template provided below). Proposals will be evaluated with respect to a number of criteria (unordered): - Adequacy of conference and exhibit facilities for the anticipated number of registrants - Adequacy of accommodations and food services (in a range of price categories) and proximity to the conference facilities - Adequacy of expenses projections and expected surplus - Appropriateness of proposed dates - Geographical and national balance with regard to previous EACL and ACL conferences, and other major Natural Language Processing conferences held in EMEA - Co-location with national/regional conferences - Experience of the local arrangements team - Local CL community support - Local government and industry support - Appropriateness of expected registration fees - Accessibility of proposed site Reports, lessons learnt and successful bids from previous years: - EACL 23 report https://www.romanklinger.de/blog-assets/2023-05-12/eacl2023-conf-report.pdf The EACL conference handbook: https://2024.eacl.org/downloads/handbook.pdf Please send your expressions of interest electronically to the EACL Board: eacl-info@aclweb.org The EACL board encourages groups who intend to submit a proposal to ask questions about how to prepare the proposal.

*Important Dates:*

14th April 2025: Deadline for draft bids April 2025: Feedback to bidders, announcement of shortlist of bidders May 2025: Deadline for final bids June 2025: Final bid chosen (to be publicly announced in July at ACL2025) April/May 2026: EACL Conference

Best regards, Nina Tahmasebi – Secretary of EACL –