Agents, Anomalies, and Visual Analytics

Welcome to the 2026 VAST Challenge!

Each year, the VAST Challenge encourages participants to develop novel and effective solutions that use visual analytics and interactive visualization to analyze scenarios in realistic datasets. Submissions are reviewed by a committee of researchers and practitioners for potential Awards and Honorable Mentions. The Challenge culminates in a workshop in the fall that gives these selected teams an opportunity to present their solutions, and participants with completed submissions may also submit a two-page summary paper for the proceedings. The 2026 VAST Challenge workshop will be held in conjunction with the the IEEE VIS Conference.

Workshop Program

Monday, November 9: 13:00 - 16:30 (ET)

Room: Essex Center

The technical program of the 2026 VAST Challenge consists of 15-minute invited talks by participants whose submissions received Award or Honorable Mention recognition. The session chairs will also provide an overview of this year’s Mini-Challenges, and wrap up with a panel discussion related to how agentic AI is reshaping the way visual analytics and data challenges can work. There will be a 30-minute break at the midpoint of the session (VIS-wide coffee break).

  • 13:00: Welcome
  • 13:05: Mini-Challenge 1 (MC1) Introduction
  • 13:10: 🅷 MC1 Honorable Mention for Innovative Integrated Timeline Visualization (Wang)
  • 13:25: 🅷 MC1 Honorable Mention for Effective Integration of Indicators in Analysis Dashboard (Ilina)
  • 13:40: 🅷 MC1 Honorable Mention for Intuitive Human-AI Interactions for Enrichment (Zeyu and Coscia)
  • 13:55: Mini-Challenge 2 (MC2) Introduction
  • 14:00: 🏆 MC2 Award for Presenting Context with Rich Visual Encodings (Khanal)
  • 14:15: 🅷 MC2 Honorable Mention for Effectively Illustrating Patterns in the Data (Sun)
14:30 - 15:00: ☕ Coffee Break
  • 15:00: 🅷 MC2 Honorable Mention for Analysis of Human-Agent Interactions (Perca)
  • 15:15: 🏆 MC2 Award for Innovative Support for Analytical Pivoting (Rauscher et al.)
  • 15:30: 🏆 MC1 Award for Strong Support for Visual Discovery and Evidence Gathering (Rauscher et al.)
  • 15:45: Design Challenge (DC) Introduction
  • 15:50: 🏆 MC1 Award for Bold Exploratory Visual Design (Yao)
  • 16:05: Panel: “VAST in the Era of Agentic AI” (Cottam, Gomez, Suh)
  • 16:30: Adjourn

Attending the Workshop

VAST Challenge 2026 will hold our workshop on Monday, November 9 at IEEE VIS 2026 on-site at the Boston (main) conference location. We are exploring remote participation options for attendees who cannot join us in Boston, and will update this page soon.

Registration

To attend the VAST Challenge workshop in Boston, please register for IEEE VIS 2026 at https://ieeevis.org/year/2026/info/registration-and-travel/conference-registration/.

Note that attendees and presenters at VAST Challenge can choose any registration that best works for your schedule (you do not need an “Author registration” unless you are required to have that for other published work at IEEE VIS). There is no special support for attending the VAST Challenge workshop from the VIS satellite events, which are geared toward the main VIS program, so do not choose a VIS satellite registration unless you are doing so for other VIS content.

Reminder on Early Bird Registration: The deadline for discounted early registration is September 25, 2026, anywhere-on-earth.

Deadlines

  • Challenge kickoff: Monday, 13 April 2026 – All data available now!
  • Submission deadline: Friday, 17 July 2026
    • EXTENDED: Friday, 24 July 2026
  • Two page summary: Friday, 14 August 2026 (Optional, for workshop proceedings)

Scientists look out over a factory floor showing a flurry of anthropomorphic AI agent activity

For questions about this year’s challenges or the VAST Challenge in general, please reach out to .