Call for Papers *SEM2026: The 15th Joint Conference on Lexical and Computational Semantics, San Diego, CA. (Co-located with ACL)

[Hsuvas Borkakoty]

*SEM 2026: The 15th Joint Conference on Lexical and Computational Semantics [San Diego, CA (Co-located with ACL 2026)]

Website: https://starsem2026.github.io/

SEM brings together researchers interested in the semantics of natural languages and its computational modelling. The conference embraces a wide range of approaches including data-driven, neural, probabilistic and symbolic; practical applications as well as theoretical contributions are welcome. The long-term goal of *SEM is to provide a forum for NLP researchers working on any aspect of natural language semantics.   

*SEM invites submissions related to the computational modelling of natural language semantics (understood broadly) and its application. Relevant areas include (but are not limited to) theoretical aspects of computational semantics, empirical and data-driven approaches, resources, evaluation, and applications/tools.    

*SEM encourages authors to consider ethical aspects of their work, and to address and discuss ethical questions and implications relevant to their research. *SEM also values reproducibility and particularly welcomes submissions that adhere to the reproducibility guidelines as specified here.

Please fill out this form if you would like to volunteer as a reviewer or as an Area Chair.

Questions may be directed to: startsem...@googlegroups.com

New for *SEM 2026 

1. One Day Conference: Unlike past iterations, *Sem 2026 will be a one-day conference. (ACL has informed us that this is due to venue size limitations.)

2. Centering Research Questions: Research questions in *Sem, and NLP generally, can be roughly categorized into those that address:

• new findings about language (linguistic phenomena, semantic patterns),
  
• new findings about people (language use, behavior, health, ethics, etc.),
• new findings about automatic language processing (advancing language understanding through ML/AI and other approaches).

Centering and explicitly articulating the research question helps authors frame and present their contribution more clearly. It also helps reviewers and Area Chairs evaluate the work within the appropriate context. For example, a paper that centers a compelling linguistic or behavioral research question and offers meaningful new insights need not also introduce methodological novelty or rely on the latest models (including LLMs). A simple and interpretable approach may make good sense.

To support this, the *SEM 2026 submission form asks authors to explicitly identify the predominant research question type for their work, as well as any additional categories that apply. There are no quotas for accepted papers of different types, and submissions will not receive preferential treatment based on category selection.

Including this information also allows *SEM to track the kinds of research questions authors pursue and how the conference’s focus evolves over time.

3. Lasting Impact

Modern NLP and ML papers have often been criticized for being overly incremental or becoming obsolete shortly after publication. To encourage work with broader scientific value and longer-term relevance, reviewers of *Sem 2026 will be asked to explicitly assess the potential lasting impact of each submission. This assessment will be included as a short-written justification and will factor into the overall recommendation.

Importantly, a healthy research ecosystem requires diversity in the time horizons of research contributions. Some papers offer immediate practical value; others generate insights or resources whose importance unfolds over years. *Sem 2026 welcomes this full spectrum. Reviewers should evaluate the potential for lasting influence—not only immediate performance gains.

Work can have a lasting impact in many ways. See our blog post on this.

Topics of Interest (non-exhaustive)

• Compositional semantics and sentence representations
  
• Statistical, machine learning, and deep learning methods in semantic tasks
  
• Multilingual and cross-lingual semantics
  
• Word sense disambiguation and induction
  
• Sentiment Analysis, Computational Affective Science, Stylistic Analysis, and Argument Mining
  
• Computational Social Science, Digital Humanities, and Cultural Analytics
  
• Semantic parsing, and syntax-semantics interface
  
• Frame semantics and semantic role labeling
  
• Textual inference, textual entailment, and question answering
  
• Formal approaches to semantics
  
• Extraction of events and of causal and temporal relations
  
• Entity linking, pronouns and coreference
  
• Discourse, pragmatics, and dialogue
  
• Machine reading
  
• Abusive language detection, Fact verification and related tasks
  
• Extra-propositional aspects of meaning
  
• Multiword and idiomatic expressions
  
• Metaphor, irony, and humor processing
  
• Knowledge mining and acquisition
  
• Common sense reasoning
  
• Language generation
  
• Multidisciplinary research on semantics
  
• Grounding and multimodal semantics
  
• Psycholinguistics
  
• Interpretability and Explainability
  
• Human semantic processing
  
• Semantic annotation, evaluation, and resources
  
• NLP Applications
  
• Ethical aspects and bias in semantic representation

Submission Instructions

Submissions must describe unpublished work and be written in English. We solicit both long and short papers. Long papers describe original research and may consist of up to eight (8) pages of content, plus unlimited pages for references. Appendices are allowed after the references, but the paper should be self-contained, and reviewers will not be required to check the appendices, if any. Final versions of long papers will be given one additional page of content (up to 9 pages) so that reviewers' comments can be taken into account. Short papers describe original focused research and may consist of up to four (4) pages, plus unlimited pages for references. Upon acceptance, short papers will be given five (5) content pages in the proceedings. Authors are encouraged to use this additional page to address reviewers' comments in their final versions. 

Limitations and Ethics Statement sections are allowed and encouraged but are not mandatory. These sections should be placed after the conclusion and will not count towards the overall page limit. 

Submissions should follow the ARR formatting requirements. 

Submission routes and deadlines

*SEM solicits direct submissions (not through ARR). The deadline for direct submissions is Feb 13, 2026, and these submissions will be reviewed by the *SEM2025 program committee. Submissions are made through OpenReview.

Direct submission link:  

https://openreview.net/group?id=aclweb.org/StarSEM/2026/Conference

Multiple submission policy

*SEM does not prohibit the submission of work that is under consideration for another venue at the same time as the *SEM review period. However, authors of such papers will be asked to declare this at submission time. 

Important Dates
(All deadlines are 11:59pm UTC-12h, AoE)
Direct submission deadline (long & short papers): Feb 13, 2026
Notification of acceptance: May 5, 2026
Camera-ready deadline: May 26, 2026
Conference date: July 6, 2026 (co-located with ACL 2026) 

Following the ACL and ARR policies, there is no anonymity period requirement.

Best regards,
The *SEM 2026 Program Chairs