The Association for the Advancement of Affective Computing (AAAC) invites you to join us at our 14th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII), which will be held as an in-person event in Puebla, Mexico, on September 7th – 10th, 2026. Accepted papers must be presented by one of the paper’s authors.

The ACII conference series is the premier international venue for interdisciplinary research on the design of systems that can recognise, interpret, and simulate human emotions and, more generally, affective phenomena. The conference is technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society (PAMI-TC). All accepted papers will be included in IEEE Xplore and indexed by EI. A selection of the best articles at ACII 2026 will be invited to submit extended versions to the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing. The conference will be co-located with IVA (Intelligent Virtual Agent Conference) 2026.

The theme for ACII 2026 is Emotions beyond borders: Multicultural Affective Computing. Multicultural affective computing is the study and development of systems that can recognize and respond to human emotions across different cultural contexts. It considers how cultural norms, expressions, and interpretations of emotions vary, ensuring that emotion-aware technologies interact appropriately and accurately with users from diverse backgrounds.

See topics of interest below and the Main Track, Special Track, and Workshop Papers submission guidelines for more details. ACII 2026 also offers a paper-to-demo fast track for authors of main track papers that include an interactive system, prototype, simulator, or tool. If authors opt in and their main track papers are accepted, the work in the accepted paper will be additionally considered for the demo track. Due to space and logistics constraints, there will be a final selection of demos (from both the paper-to-demo fast track and the standard demo track submissions). This will be done by demo chairs and based on relevance to the conference, technical robustness, and diversity of topics. Please see the Call for Interactive Demos for more details.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Recognition and Synthesis of Human Affect from ALL Modalities
Multimodal Modeling of Cognitive and Affective States
Contextualized Modeling of Cognitive and Affective States
Multimodal Data Fusion for Affect Recognition
Summarisation of Affective Behaviour
Synthesis of Multimodal Affective Behaviour
Facial and Body Gesture Recognition, Modeling, and Animation
Motion Capture for Affect Recognition
Affective Speech Analysis, Recognition, and Synthesis
Recognition and Synthesis of Auditory Affect Bursts (Laughter, Cries, etc.)
Affective Text Processing and Sentiment Analysis
Affect Recognition and Expression in Large Language Models (LLMs)
Affect Recognition from Alternative Modalities (Physiology, Brain Waves, etc.)
Affective Science using Affective Computing Tools
Studies of affective behavior perception using computational tools
Studies of affective behavior production using computational tools
Studies of affect in medical/clinical settings using computational tools
Studies of affect in context using computational tools
Psychology & Cognition of Affect in Designing Computational Systems
Computational Models of Affective Processes
Issues in Psychology & Cognition of Affect in Affective Computing Systems
Cultural Differences in Affective Design and Interaction
Affective Interfaces
Interfaces for Monitoring and Improving Mental and Physical Well-Being
Design of Affective Loop and Affective Dialogue Systems
Human-Centred Human-Behaviour-Adaptive Interfaces
Interfaces for Attentive & Intelligent Environments
Mobile, Tangible, and Virtual/Augmented Multimodal Proactive Interfaces
Distributed/Collaborative Multimodal Proactive Interfaces
Tools and System Design Issues for Building Affective and Proactive Interfaces
Evaluation of Affective, Behavioural, and Proactive Interfaces
Affective, Social, and Inclusive Robotics and Virtual Agents
Artificial Agents for Supporting Mental and Physical Well-Being
Emotion in Robot and Virtual Agent Cognition and Action
Embodied Emotion
Biologically-Inspired Architectures for Affective and Social Robotics
Developmental and Evolutionary Models for Affective and Social Robotics
Models of Emotion for Embodied Conversational Agents
Personality in Embodied Conversational Agents
Memory, Reasoning, and Learning in Affective Conversational Agents
Affect and Group Emotions
Analyzing and modeling groups taking into account emergent states and/or emotions
Integration of artificial agents (robots, virtual characters) in the group life by leveraging its affective loop: interaction paradigms, strategies, modalities, and adaptation
Collaborative affective interfaces (e.g., for inclusion, for education, for games and entertainment)
Open Resources for Affective Computing
Shared Datasets for Affective Computing
Benchmarks for Affective Computing
Open-source Software/Tools for Affective Computing
Fairness, Accountability, Privacy, Transparency, and Ethics in Affective Computing
Bias, imbalance, and inequalities in data and modeling approaches in the context of Affective Computing
Bias mitigation in the context of Affective Computing
Explainability and Transparency in the Context of Affective Computing
Privacy-preserving affect sensing and modeling
Ethical aspects in the context of Affective Computing
Applications
User Experience
Health and well-being
Education
Entertainment
Consumer Products
Important Dates
The time zone for the deadlines below is Anywhere on Earth (AOE).

Main Track
Main track full paper submission deadline: 27 March 2026
Rebuttal notification for the main track: 21 May 2026
Rebuttal period: 25 May – 29 May 2026
Paper notification for the main track: 13 June 2026
Camera-ready paper submission deadline: 3 July 2026
Early-bird registration deadline: 3 July 2026
Main conference: 8 – 10 Sept 2026
Workshops and tutorials, and DC: 7 Sept 2026