After three decades of research exploring the informational, aesthetic, experiential, and social dimensions of auditory displays, the field has matured into a rich interdisciplinary landscape. Sound has become not only a medium for conveying data, but also a powerful catalyst for engagement, reflection, creativity, and community. With developed sonification techniques, established design principles, and an expanding ecosystem of tools for sonification and sound computing, the time is right to consider how auditory displays can extend their impact: sound to inform, inspire, and include.
The ICAD 2026 committee is seeking full papers, extended abstracts, sonification concert pieces, demos, installations, workshops, and tutorials from across the full spectrum of auditory display research and practice. This year, we are particularly interested in approaches that use sound to broaden participation, spark insight, promote accessibility, strengthen community, and support inclusive interaction. We also welcome contributions that use auditory displays to foster awareness of global challenges, such as sustainability and social justice, and that explore how sonic communication can help societies navigate these issues. We invite contributions that push the boundaries of how sound can build bridges between communities and even continents. Join us as we shape a soundful community gathering – one that remains globally connected while taking meaningful steps toward more sustainable academic exchange.
Submission Deadlines
Deadlines with links to submission details:
Full Papers (6 to 8 pages) – March 6, 2026
Extended Abstracts (2 to 4 pages) – March 20
Workshops / Tutorials – March 20
Music/Sonification Concert Contributions – March 20
Doctoral Consortium / Think Tank – March 20
Note: All deadlines are Anywhere on Earth (AoE).
Anticipated registration fee is around 250 EUR (~200 EUR for students).
Submission Templates
For Full Papers, Extended Abstracts, Workshops/Demos, and Music/Installations:
The safest way to obtain the correct format is to paste your text, etc. into a copy of the template. For those using the Word Template, please ensure that your submission is formatted correctly, with the headers and footers included in the template. For reference, please consult the PDF of the .doc template.
Templates will be added soon:
- Link to Overleaf LaTeX template
- Download LaTeX template
- Download .docx template
Where to submit
EasyChair: the submission link will be added on 2026-02-15.
Submission Accessibility
Making conference materials accessible promotes equal access for researchers in our field. We highly encourage researchers to provide accessible submissions and require that camera-ready papers be accessible.
Checking Your PDF is Accessible
If you can, use the Adobe Acrobat Pro Accessibility Checker (Full Check) to verify the accessibility of your PDF. See Adobe’s detailed instructions for more information.
If you don’t have access to Adobe Acrobat Pro, there are some free accessibility checkers available online that may be able to help.
Fixing Accessibility Problems
A lot of accessibility problems can be fixed directly in Acrobat’s Accessibility Checker. However, Microsoft Word for PC can generate PDFs with many accessibility features and it’s often easier to correct issues in the Word source file. SIGACCESS provides detailed instructions. Unfortunately, Word for Mac and LaTeX users will need to manually add accessibility features.
At a minimum, make sure your document is tagged, tab order follows the document structure, figures and inaccessible equations have alternative text, table headers are marked, and the document language is specified. As a note, the built-in auto-tagging feature of Acrobat is not 100% reliable with our templates. Please manually check that any auto-generated tags are logical.
More Information
ACM SIGACCESS has a number of resources http://www.sigaccess.org/welcome-to-sigaccess/resources/ for making conference materials and presentations more accessible.
Please contact ICAD2026’s Accessibility Chairs (David Whalen, Enrique Pérez Montero, Tony Stockman) at accessibility@icad2026.icad.org if you have any questions.
Poster Format
Posters are made to A1 portrait size (width 594 mm, height 841 mm), prepared by the presenter in advance, and brought to the conference.
Guidelines and recommendations for making an effective academic poster are easy to find; for example, here is an online guide from the University of York that we find useful: https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/posters
If your contribution is strongly auditory, please consider bringing a laptop and a pair of headphones to make your interactions with conference attendees during the poster presentation session even more rewarding. Tables for the laptops will be available in the poster area as needed.
Full Papers and Extended Abstracts
Topics
Contributions for ICAD 2026 may cover one or more of the following topics (non-exhaustive list):
- Sonification Design Approaches (methodologies, paradigms, theories, and taxonomies)
- Case Studies of Real-world Applications
- Cultural Studies in Sonification
- Philosophical Perspectives on Sonification (ontological, aesthetic, and epistemological issues)
- User Studies of Sonification Experiences
- Sonification-inspired Music and Performing Arts
- Speculative Sonification Designs and Prototypes
- Psychoacoustics, Perception and Cognition Studies
- Accessibility, Inclusive Design and Assistive Technologies
- Peripheral and Ambient Sonification
- Interactive Sonification
- Sonic Interaction Design
- Auditory Process Monitoring
- Sonification Application Domains (e.g. Health and Environmental Data, Internet of Things, Big Data & Cybersecurity, Robotics and Autonomous Vehicles)
- Sustainability and Auditory Display
- Sonification in Entertainment (Games, Performances)
- Immersive and Spatial Audio
- Computational Modeling and AI Approaches to Sonification
- Sensing Devices and Platforms for Auditory Display & Sonification
- Human Factors, Ergonomics and Usability of Auditory Interfaces
Submission Content: Categories and Requirements
Submissions relevant to the Call for Participation are accepted in any of the following categories:
- Scientific / Empirical Study
Empirical study submissions are intended to present the results of experimental work, whether objective or subjective, numerical or perceptual. Submissions are evaluated with regards to the novelty of the work, scholarly/scientific quality, suitability to the ICAD community domains, and importance of the results. Submissions should include a state-of-the-art review which places the work and its results in the perspective of previous studies. Enough detail should be provided concerning experimental protocols so that the study could be repeated. Modern standards for statistical analysis should be followed (e.g. mean and variances in plots, boxplot or histogram distributions of data, ANOVA with corresponding p and F values provided, adequate number of test subjects). - Position paper
Position Papers are those that address generic topics; those of general concern to the ICAD community or a specific conference theme. Frequently, such papers will challenge their audience to consider new ways of doing things or new conceptual paradigms. It is expected that such papers shall contain argument and counterargument supported by substantial evidence and/or documentation such as literature reviews of related prior research. Examples of Position Papers include those that discuss sonification taxonomies; models of listening; cross-modal comparisons of conceptual or psycho-perpetual issues such as the nature of representation; philosophical and cultural issues such as the role of sonification in data analysis and the public understanding of science. - Informative Sonification / Sound design
This submission category is intended to provide a framework for the presentation of primarily informative sonification works. Submissions in this category require both a written element and a multimedia element in order for the review committee to judge the work. - Artistic sonification / Music / Composition
This submission category is intended to provide a framework for the presentation of artistic works involving sonification. Submissions in this category require both a written element and a multimedia element in order for the review committee to judge the work. - Project architecture / Project presentation
This submission category is for the presentation of a system architecture or a long term project prior to the production of any results. This type of submission is considered useful in providing both an extensive state-of-the-art review as well as a thorough overview of the goals and directions of the project including justifications for any choices made in the conception of the project. This category is well-suited to larger complex projects for which a sufficient presentation is poorly suited to the traditional length of a full-paper introduction.
Form of Submission and Assessment Criteria
Peer review & Anonymization
- All submissions will be fully peer-reviewed. The review process is double blind. Please submit completely anonymized drafts. Please do not include any identifying information, and refrain from citing authors’ own prior work in anything other than third person.
- Acceptance is determined solely on the merits of the submitted work.
Presentation format
- In the review process, there is no distinction between whether the presentation mode will be oral or a poster.
- Attribution of accepted submissions to either oral or poster presentation is determined by the Program Committee although authors may indicate a preferred method of presentation.
- You have the possibility to hand in a paper with an accompanying demo that is presented in addition to a talk or poster. In this case, you have to submit the required supplementary data as described in the Call for Demos.
Proceedings and Publishing
- Submissions that were accepted and presented will appear in the proceedings and will be archived accordingly.
Length and Submission Format
- Page limits include all figures, tables, appendices, and references.
- The length of the abstract should be 150-200 words.
We let authors choose the most appropriate length for their contribution amongst two formats:
Full Papers (6-8 pages)
- Full papers represent the core of the ICAD conference and they are judged accordingly. Works in any content category should be self-contained, and withstand objective criticism.
- At least two external reviews, by reviewers outside of the Program Committee, will be carried out.
Extended Abstracts (2-4 pages)
- Extended Abstracts are used to present “works in progress” for which a discussion with the community is of interest and could be beneficial to the development of the work in question.
- As Extended Abstracts are not presenting completed work, they are expected to be reviewed principally for thematic pertinence to the ICAD community.
- At least two reviews are necessary and can be carried out by the Program Committee.
- Extended Abstracts may be archived in a separate supplement to the conference proceedings, so as to clearly indicating that they have not been peer reviewed. They will not be attributed DOI references.
Audio, Videos, and other Supplementary Materials
We encourage authors to attach additional supplementary materials such as audio/video examples, data sets, or measurements. For review, you can include anonymized links to cloud services or other online sites.
For the camera ready version of an accepted manuscript, any such temporary links must be replaced by persistent links with handle/DOI or equal. We recommend the free service zenodo.org which allows you to host arbitrary data with DOI.
Attendance
Please note that at least one of the paper authors has to register and attend the conference in person in order for the accepted paper to be presented and published in the proceedings. Attendees are encouraged to choose the closest location to reduce travel and support the expedient goals of the distributed format, making ICAD 2026 as environmentally friendly as possible.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to the paper co-chairs Elias Elmquist and Adrian Garcia Riber papers@icad2026.icad.org if you have any questions.
Workshops and Tutorials
ICAD 2026 welcomes the submission of workshops and tutorials on topics related to auditory display and sonification. The proposals may take the form of tutorials on specific ICAD topics or forums for discussion and development. Workshops and Tutorials provide in-depth opportunities for conference attendees to discuss and explore important aspects of the field of auditory display with like-minded researchers and practitioners. The sessions can range from applications and programming methodologies to interdisciplinary research skills, emerging research areas, and challenging problems. Workshops focus on collaborative, deliberative engagement with a topic, whereas Tutorials focus on sharing tools, skills, and techniques.
Please note that the call for Workshops and Tutorials is not limited to fully finished work; submissions may be work in progress, projects that you would like to brainstorm on, as well as fully developed work.
We especially encourage Workshop and Tutorials that creatively engage this year’s conference theme and propose innovative ways to collaborative across conference hubs. We welcome Workshop and Tutorial proposals focused on, but not limited to, the following topics:
- Sonification/Compositional Maker sessions
- Applications, usability, accessibility, and evaluation
- Auditory rendering techniques, technologies, and tools
- Design theory, methods, philosophy, and culture
- Psychology, Cognition, Perception, and Psychoacoustics
- Sonification of data:
- Context, range of scale, and utility
- Motivations, frameworks, methodologies, and techniques
Workshop and Tutorial organizers are, upon acceptance, expected to collaborate with the conference committee, issue calls for participation, gather and review contributed materials (if appropriate), and decide upon the final programme for their session.
Submission information
Proposals should be one to two pages in length. We encourage you to use the ICAD2026 LaTeX/Word template, although it is not required. Your submission should include the following:
- Title, abstract, outline of objectives (e.g., tutorial syllabus, organized discussion, presentations, submissions, etc.), relevance for ICAD attendees
- Proposed duration (from 1 hour to 4 hours)
- Invited speakers (if any)
- List of organizers, a designated contact person, and contact information for all organizers (address, email, and ‘phone)
- Technical and space requirements
Please note that workshops inviting extended abstracts and/or papers can arrange to have their contributions included in the ICAD 2026 Conference Proceedings as a supplementary section of non-refereed submissions. These materials will be accessible online via the DOI number for the 2026 proceedings volume.
Workshop and tutorial proposals should be submitted via the submission platform (EasyChair) by 20 March 2026.
Space, facilities, technical support, and the number of sessions that can be accepted are limited, so early submission of proposals is encouraged.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to the workshop chairs Jordan Wirfs-Brock and Niklas Rönnberg workshops@icad2026.icad.org if you have any questions.
Music/Live Performance for Sonification Concert
This submission category is intended to provide a framework for the presentation of artistic works with a strong relation to data. The category is open to instrumental, electronic, live- electronic, and fixed media compositions.
Concert theme: We encourage the submission of works relating to this year’s conference theme: “sound to inform, inspire, and include”. We also plan to provide resources for telematic works spanning two or more participating hubs of this year’s ICAD.
The Sonification concert will be held during the ICAD 2026 conference.
The peer review is of the combination of the written concept (min 1, max 2 pages), the requirements sheet (1 page) as well as an instrumental score and/or a representative media submission. If the topic qualifies for a submission as a full paper, artists are encouraged to optionally submit a full paper to the full paper category. To be accepted for the concert and to be included in the concert booklet or (if applicable) the ICAD proceedings, at least one artist for each submission has to agree to register for and attend ICAD 2026. We do not plan to play concert pieces in the absence of the corresponding artist(s).
Concept / Program notes
The concept submission should be written as program notes for the concert booklet providing information about the motivation, the artistic process, and the aesthetics of the composition. Details of the underlying datasets should be provided together with an outline of the sonification approach/methodology used.