SHL Activity Recognition Challenge @HASCA/Ubicomp 2026 (eighth edition)

[linwa...@gmail.com]

Dear Colleagues,

The Wearable Technologies Lab at the University of Sussex is glad to inform

you about the fourth SHL Activity Recognition Challenge.

http://www.shl-dataset.org/challenge-2026/

This eighth edition of the challenge follows on our very successful 2018,

2019, 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025 challenges.

Motivated by the growing interest in foundation models, particularly large

language models, this year’s edition focuses on their application to

transportation mode recognition. The goal is to accurately recognize eight

modes of locomotion and transportation in a user-independent manner. In

particular, the challenge aims to explore novel ways of adapting,

combining, and interfacing foundation models with sensor data to improve

recognition performance.

Participants are required to design a complete pipeline that leverages

existing pre-trained foundation models to process sensor data and predict

activity labels. Participants are also required to submit a technical paper describing their methodology and development process.

Accepted contributions will be presented at a special session of

the HASCA Workshop at Ubicomp 2026 and included in the adjunct proceedings.

**** Deadlines  *****

• Registration via email: as soon as possible, but not later than 30.05.2026

• Challenge duration: 10.05.2026 – 30.06.2026

• Submission deadline: 30.06.2026

• HASCA-SHL paper submission: 04.07.2026

• HASCA-SHL review notification: 15.07.2026

• HASCA-SHL camera ready submission: 22.07.2026

• UbiComp early-bird registration: TBD

• HASCA workshop: 11-12 October (TBC), 2026 in Shanghai, China

**** Prizes ****

1.    800 £

2.    400 £

3.    200 £

**** More details ****

http://www.shl-dataset.org/challenge-2026/