2026:Call for Challenges

Call for Challenge Proposals & Task Captains

We invite the ISMIR community to propose new research challenges that address cutting-edge problems in Music Information Retrieval (MIR). These challenges should aim to push the boundaries of current research and foster innovation in the field.

We also welcome challenge sponsors from both industry and academia, particularly those willing to contribute datasets, evaluation tools, or computational resources to support the competition. This may include proprietary test sets, i.e., datasets that remain private and are not disclosed to participants or MIREX organizers.

What's new:

In MIREX 2026, we introduce two special calls for challenges:

1. Novel evaluation pipelines

There is a growing need for new evaluation methodologies. We welcome challenge proposals that introduce novel evaluation pipelines, including but not limited to the evaluation of generative models, interactive systems, and other emerging paradigms.

2. Evaluation under limited resources

In addition to state-of-the-art systems, MIREX aims to better support researchers and research areas with limited resources. We welcome challenge proposals that focus on underrepresented research areas, music genres, or research communities.

For all tasks, task submissions are encouraged to report key resource indicators, including:

• training data size
• model size
• other computational resources used in model development

Task captains are encouraged to summarize and report this information in the task results page.

Rules

For both new and established tasks, all proposals must have an assigned task captain responsible for evaluating participant submissions.

Task Captain Responsibilities:

• Register on the MIREX Wiki and maintain the task description page.
• Collect submissions via the MIREX submission server (or provide customized submission instructions).
• Execute and evaluate the submissions.
• Report results to MIREX and create a results page on the MIREX Wiki.
• (Optional) Present a MIREX task captain poster at the Late-Breaking and Demo (LBD) session at ISMIR 2026.

Submission Format

A call for challenge proposal must contain the following content:

1. Title of the new task
2. Abstract
3. Task description
4. Significance of the task
5. Evaluation criteria
6. Datasets and resources provided
7. Requirements for submission
8. Task captain information (name, title, affiliation, email, and MIREX Wiki username)
9. Long-term plan (your willingness and availability to maintain the task in coming years)

A task captain proposal should contain the following content:

1. Title of the existing task
2. Abstract
3. Task description
4. Evaluation criteria, if different from previous MIREXes
5. Datasets and resources provided, if different from previous MIREXes
6. Requirements for submission, if different from previous MIREXes
7. Task captain information (name, title, affiliation, email, and MIREX Wiki username)
8. Long-term plan (your willingness and availability to maintain the task in coming years)

Please submit a 1-4 page PDF to the MIREX organizing committee future-mirex@googlegroups.com before the due date.

Multiple submissions

• A single individual may serve as the task captain for multiple tasks.
• Conversely, a single task may be co-managed by multiple task captains.
• If we receive similar proposals from different authors, we may reach out to coordinate a joint effort to co-host the task.

Deadlines

• Challenge proposals due: May 22, 2026
• Notification of acceptance: May 29, 2026

Contact Us

We look forward to receiving your innovative and impactful challenge proposals. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the MIREX organizing committee future-mirex@googlegroups.com.

MIREX 2026 Organizers:

• Gus Xia, MBZUAI
• Junyan Jiang, New York University
• Akira Maezawa, Yamaha
• Ziyu Wang, New York University
• Yixiao Zhang, ByteDance
• Ruibin Yuan, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
• J. Stephen Downie, University of Illinois