[meetings] CfP | The 7th Generation and Evaluation of Non-verbal Behaviour for Embodied Agents (GENEA) Workshop 2026

[Oya Celiktutan]

📢 Call for Papers

The 7th Generation and Evaluation of Non-verbal Behaviour for Embodied Agents (GENEA) Workshop
October 5, 2026 (in person)
Held in conjunction with ACM ICMI 2026, Naples, Italy
Website: https://genea-workshop.github.io/2026/workshop/

We are pleased to share the Call for Papers for the 7th edition of the GENEA Workshop, focusing on the generation and evaluation of non-verbal behaviours such as gesticulation, facial expressions, and gaze – essential components of natural interaction with embodied agents, including virtual agents and social robots.

Currently, behaviour generation is typically powered by rule-based systems, data-driven approaches like generative AI, or hybrid models. For evaluation, both objective and subjective methods are used, though their application and validity are often debated. This workshop aims to bring together researchers from diverse disciplines working on various aspects of non-verbal behaviour generation, facilitating discussion on advancing both generation techniques and evaluation methodologies.

✨ Topics of Interest

We invite original contributions on topics including (but not limited to):

• Automated synthesis of facial expressions, gestures, and gaze movements, including multimodal synthesis

• Closed-loop / end-to-end non-verbal behaviour generation (from perception to action)

• Use of LLMs/VLMs in the context of non-verbal behaviour synthesis

• New datasets, annotation methods, and analyses of existing datasets related to non-verbal behaviour

• Cross-cultural and multilingual influences on non-verbal behaviour generation

• Cognitive and affective models for non-verbal behaviour generation

• Ethical considerations and biases in non-verbal behaviour synthesis

• Subjective and objective evaluation methods for any of the above topics

📝 Submission Types

We welcome:

• Long papers (8 pages)

• Short papers (4 pages)

All submissions should follow the double-column ACM conference format. Pages containing only references do not count toward the page limit. Papers must be submitted in PDF format via OpenReview and formatted for double-blind review. To encourage authors to make their work reproducible and reward the effort that this requires, we have introduced the GENEA Workshop Reproducibility Award. 

Accepted papers will be presented at the workshop and included in the ICMI companion proceedings.

🗓️ Important Dates (End of day, Anywhere on Earth)

• Paper abstract deadline: 2 July 2026

• Full submission deadline: 3 July 2026

• Notification of acceptance: 23 July 2026

• Camera-ready deadline: 31 July 2026

• Workshop date: 5 October 2026

👥 Organisers

• Taras Kucherenko – Electronic Arts (EA), Sweden

• Alice Delbosc – Davi, The Humanizers, France

• Gustav Eje Henter – KTH Royal Institute of Technology / Motorica AB, Sweden

• Oya Celiktutan – King’s College London, United Kingdom

• Eneko Atxa Landa – University of the Basque Country, Spain

• Jieyeon Woo – Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials, South Korea

• Haoyang Du – Technological University Dublin, Ireland

For more information, visit our website, contact us at genea-...@googlegroups.com, or follow us:

💼 LinkedIn group
🔵 @geneaworkshop.bsky.social (BlueSky)

We look forward to your contributions!