The European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT) invites expressions of interest to host the EAMT 2026 conference, to be held in Europe, the Middle East or Africa (EMEA) between May-June 2026. This will be the 26th EAMT conference. 

At this stage, we are seeking draft proposals from prospective bidders. These will be evaluated and promising bidders will be asked to provide additional information for the final selection. The EAMT president will act as general chair and will work together with local organisers to design and shape the conference, including the appointment of chairs.

Draft proposals (due September 13th, 2024) should include information on all of the following items:

1. Proposed dates: between May – June 2026 (3 days main conference + 1 day for workshops and tutorials)

2. Location: city and conference venue. Indicate whether the conference would be held at a university, hotel or convention centre. Bear in mind that EAMT is growing: Ghent (EAMT 2022) had around 120 registered participants, Tampere (EAMT 2023) and Sheffield (EAMT 2024) had around 190 registered participants. So please suggest a location that could host 200+ people for the main conference sessions, plus room for registration, a large poster or exhibit room, and at least 4 conference rooms for hosting parallel workshops and tutorials on the last day (about 100 people each).

3. Local arrangements team: local chair/co-chairs, committee (identifying a coordinator to be co-opted as EAMT executive committee member), volunteer labour (e.g. students), registration handling. The local arrangements team will be responsible for activities such as arranging meeting rooms, equipment, refreshments, accommodation, on-site registration, participant internet access, the welcome reception, the conference dinner, and working with the other chairs and the EAMT Board to develop the budget and registration materials. Indicate whether any national/regional computational linguistics or translation studies association would be on the board of the local organisation

4. Computing/wifi/audiovisual: whether there will be desktops/laptops in conference rooms and high-speed wireless Internet access, what the audiovisual facilities are, etc. There should be sufficient sound and microphones that can go around the room for Q&A.

5. Food catering including breaks (two coffee breaks and one lunch break for all days of the conference), reception and conference dinner

6. Social events, including infrastructure for banquet/other social events and welcome reception

7. Potential for sponsorships: local organisers partner with the EAMT EC to engage sponsors and align track chairs and keynotes. Bids should include strategies for outreach, anticipated sponsor tiers, and potential benefits for sponsors.

8. Co-location with other meetings and events: demonstrate that you have researched the dates to avoid clashes with other events and considered opportunities for co-location with other meetings

9. Cost estimates: while a finalised budget is not expected at this stage, it is essential that proposers provide well-researched estimates with some level of detail related to all of the above items. These estimates should be documented in the expenses spreadsheet (template provided by the EAMT upon request).

Proposals will be evaluated with respect to a number of criteria (unordered):

● Adequacy of conference and exhibit facilities for the anticipated number of registrants

● Adequacy of accommodations and food services (in a range of price categories) and proximity to the conference facilities

● Adequacy of expense projections and expected surplus

● Appropriateness of proposed dates

● Geographical and national balance with regard to previous EACL and ACL conferences, and other major natural-language processing and translation studies conferences held in EMEA

● Co-location with national/regional conferences

● Experience of the local arrangements team

● Local machine translation and translation studies community support

● Local government and industry support

● Appropriateness of expected registration fees

● Accessibility of proposed site via public transportation

● Alignment with the EAMT ethics statement and policies: https://eamt.org/ethics/

Please send your expressions of interest electronically to the EAMT president:

Helena Moniz <<helena.moniz “at” campus.ul.pt>>

The EAMT board encourages groups who intend to submit a proposal to ask questions about how to prepare the proposal.

Important Dates:

• September 13th, 2024 > October 14th, 2024: Bids submission deadline
• September 20th, 2024 > October 21st, 2024: Shortlist and feedback to bidders
• September 27th, 2024 > October 28th, 2024: Final bids due
• October 4th, 2024 > November 4th, 2024: Final bid chosen