INTRODUCTION

The CLEF Initiative (Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum) is a self-organized body whose main mission is to promote research, innovation, and development of information access systems with an emphasis on multilingual and multimodal information with various levels of structure.

The CLEF Initiative is structured in two main parts: - a series of Evaluation Labs, i.e. laboratories to conduct evaluation of information access systems and workshops to discuss and pilot innovative evaluation activities; - a peer-reviewed Conference on a broad range of issues, including - investigation continuing the activities of the Evaluation Labs; - experiments using multilingual and multimodal data; in particular, but not only, data resulting from CLEF activities; - research in evaluation methodologies and challenges.

Since 2000 CLEF has played a leading role in stimulating investigation and research in a wide range of key areas in the information retrieval domain. It has promoted the study and implementation of appropriate evaluation methodologies for diverse types of tasks and media. Over the years, a wide, strong, and multidisciplinary research community has been built, which covers and spans the different areas of expertise needed to deal with the breadth of CLEF activities, making CLEF one of the top venues for information access.

CALL FOR BIDS

The CLEF Steering Committee solicits proposals from groups interested in organizing the CLEF conference and labs in September 2026.

Groups submitting a bid for CLEF 2026 also commit themselves to collect membership fees on behalf of the CLEF Association and to pass them to the CLEF Association.

Guidelines on submitting a bid can be found in the Template for Bids available at:

https://www.clef-initiative.eu/assets/CLEF-Template_for_bids.docx

Bids must be submitted by **Wednesday, December 20th, 2023** by email to the Steering Committee Chair Nicola Ferro (chair@clef-initiative.eu).

The Steering Committee will review and select the proposals. The Steering Committee can ask for modifications and changes to the proposals, if deemed necessary.

Interested parties can contact the Steering Committee Chair Nicola Ferro (chair@clef-initiative.eu) to receive further details.

IMPORTANT DATES

- Bid submission deadline: Wednesday, December 20th, 2023 - Feedback to bidders and discussion: January 2024 - Bid selection: late February 2024

STEERING COMMITTEE

- Avi Arampatzis, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece - Alberto Barrón-Cedeño, University of Bologna, Italy - Martin Braschler, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland - Khalid Choukri, Evaluations and Language resources Distribution Agency (ELDA), France - Fabio Crestani, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland - Carsten Eickhoff, Brown University, USA - Nicola Ferro, University of Padua, Italy - Norbert Fuhr, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany - Anastasia Giachanou, Utrecht University, The Netherlands - Lorraine Goeuriot, Université Grenoble Alpes, France - Julio Gonzalo, National Distance Education University (UNED), Spain - Donna Harman, National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), USA - Bogdan Ionescu, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania - Evangelos Kanoulas, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands - Birger Larsen, University of Aalborg, Denmark - David E. Losada, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain - Mihai Lupu, Vienna University of Technology, Austria - Maria Maistro, University of Copenhagen, Denmark - Josiane Mothe, IRIT, Université de Toulouse, France - Henning Müller, University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland (HES-SO), Switzerland - Jian-Yun Nie, Université de Montréal, Canada - Gabriella Pasi, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy - Paolo Rosso, Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain - Eric SanJuan, University of Avignon, France - Giuseppe Santucci, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy - Laure Soulier, Pierre and Marie Curie University (Paris 6), France - Theodora Tsikrika, Information Technologies Institute (ITI), Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH), Greece - Christa Womser-Hacker, University of Hildesheim, Germany