The 26^th ACM Symposium on Document Engineering

August 25, 2026 to August 28, 2026
HES-SO / University of Fribourg, Switzerland

Call for Competitions

DocEng 2026 invites proposals for competitions that challenge the document engineering community to advance the state of the art in computational document processing and analysis. Competitions provide an excellent platform for benchmarking new approaches and fostering innovation in the field.

Competition Guidelines

All competitions must adhere to the following guidelines:

1. Announcement and Deadlines

• The competition must be announced no later than [to be announced], with a clear description of the task, data, and evaluation procedure
• The competition organisers must submit a four-page report by [to be announced], to allow sufficient time for review before the conference
• The competition report will be reviewed by the competition sub-committee for clarity, correctness, and fairness before final results are announced
• The competition report must list all contributors; plagiarism or uncredited use of existing work is strictly prohibited
• At least one of the competition organisers must be present at the conference to present the results of the competition

2. Data and Resources

• The dataset(s) used for the competition shall be made available on the DocEng conference website (or linked from it) by the announcement date
• If additional resources (e.g., code libraries, sample evaluation scripts) are required, these must also be made available to all competitors

3. Evaluation Metrics

• The metrics to be used for evaluation must be clearly stated in the competition description
• Competitors must be able to verify their own scores using the provided metrics or, where possible, evaluation scripts. The competition organisers may retain a hold-back test set; however, sufficient validation data and tools must be provided to enable independent score verification by competitors
• If multiple test scores are combined, the relative weight of each score toward the final score must be explicitly indicated
• In the case of a tie, the organizers may consider secondary metrics (e.g., runtime, memory usage, novelty) as tiebreakers, to be specified in advance

4. Fairness and Transparency

• There must be a clear determination of the winner based on the published metrics
• Reports may compare submitted results against existing, well-established algorithms for benchmarking
• If previous competition submissions are to be reused for comparison, the respective teams must be informed in advance
• The competition organisers must ensure that all participants have equal access to the data, resources, and evaluation procedures
• The competition organisers must provide sufficient details (and code, where possible) to allow verification of results

5. Recognition and Rewards

• The winner will be awarded one registration pass to the conference
• The winning team will be invited to present their work as a demonstration at the conference

Important Dates

	Competitions
Competition proposals due	To be announced
Proposal acceptance notice	To be announced

All deadlines are 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth).

Submission

Competition proposals must be submitted as a 2-4 page PDF through EasyChair. Proposals should include the competition title, organizer information, competition description and rationale, and a detailed outline of the competition methodology.

Selection Committee

Competition proposals will be reviewed by:

• Charlotte Curtis
• Mihai Bilauca
• Cerstin Mahlow

Contact

For questions about competition proposals, please contact the selection committee at docengsymposium@gmail.com

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We look forward to innovative competition proposals that will engage the DocEng community!