VAST Challenge 2026 Submission Instructions

Deadline

The page includes instructions for completing a submission to the VAST Challenge. Please read it carefully!

The submission deadline is July 17, 2026 at 11:59 pm AOE.

Participants may choose submit to individual challenges (i.e., MC1 or MC2 or the DC) or submit to multiple challenges (e.g., MC1 and the MC2). However, in the latter case, teams should make a separate entry on the submission site (PCS) for each of the challenge submissions, and each one must contain the complete set of required materials for that particular challenge, as specified below. In other words, do not combine entries (like a MC1 solution and MC2 solution) into a single PCS submission, as these will be reviewed separately.

Additionally, individual participants are advised against submitting multiple entries to the same MC or DC (e.g., Person A as a team member on two submissions to MC2) except in the case of academic supervisers who may be overseeing and contributing to different student-led teams.

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Note on including GitHub/demo links in submissions

In recent years there has been an increase in submissions though github including links to live demonstrations. This is great! However, please submit your entry with a github tag or as a release. In addition, entry forms must be submitted in full before the deadline. It is not permissible to provide a link to an entry form in gitub. Entries cannot be updated after the deadline unless specifically requested by the VAST Challenge committee.

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Required Materials

Your completed submission package is due on July 17, 2026, 11:59 pm AOE. Your submission package consists of:

• a completed submission form/webpage
• a four-minute video showing your visual analytics software in operation, or for the Design Challenge a walkthrough of your design concept
• any other fields requested the PCS site for Submitting Your Entry

Instructions on Submission-Form Front Matter

The majority of your submission form should contain technical information about your solution to the Challenge and answers to the specific analysis questions; however, you must also complete the questions at the top of the form to tell about your team and resources used. You answers help the VAST Challenge organizers understand trends in how people are participating in the Challenge. Instructions for filling out these questions are below.

1. Rename the summary form file to “index.htm”. Make sure to leave the form with an htm/html extension. The reviewers will load the form webpage locally using this upload to read your responses and view your accompanying images.
2. Name your entry using a composite of your team’s organization, primary contact’s last name, and the challenge you are entering. For example, for a submission from the University of Maryland for Mini-Challenge 2, from a team led by Dr. Jones, please use UMD-Jones-MC2. If you are submitting multiple entries, please add a number to the end of the file name (e.g. UMD-Jones-MC2-1).
3. Provide a list of team members, their affiliation, and email addresses. Designate one team member as the Primary Contact. The primary contact must be able to respond to questions and communications related to the submission.
4. Indicate if this is a student team. A student team is defined as one led by a student and worked on by students. Class projects are good examples of submissions that would be provided by student teams.
5. Provide a list of analytic tools used in developing your solution. Commercially available tools like Tableau or SAS can be mentioned by name. For tools not commercially available, please provide a tool name, developer name (or a company name), and any links to the tool that can provide us more information about it. For tools developed by the submitting team, additional information such as where it was developed (e.g., “SPINVIZ was developed by the University of West Birmingham CS 459 Information Visualization class, taught Spring 2011 by Dr. Smith, and adapted by the student team for the challenge.”)
6. Provide an estimate of the number of hours spent by the entire team working on this submission. If you are submitting multiple entries, this number should reflect the time spent on this specific entry.
7. Indicate whether you give your permission for your submission to be posted in the publicly accessible Visual Analytics Benchmark Repository.

Video Preparation Instructions

Provide your explanatory video with voice narration. Participants are required to include a video of no more than four minutes in length.

This video is your chance to fully explain your entry. The video should be in .mp4 or .wmv format. If file size permits, include this video in your electronic submission (zip) package uploaded on PCS. If not, you must post it elsewhere (e.g., YouTube) and provide a link in your summary form. Verify the link is active throughout the contest period, as it may be downloaded at various times by different VAST Challenge Committee members and reviewers. If you do not have a site on which you can post your video, please contact vast_challenge@ieeevis.org to discuss other approaches.

The following tips may be helpful in creating your video:

• Provide a clear explanation how the visual analytics software you developed or used helped you analyze the data.
  • Give a clear explanation of your starting point for analysis and how you selected it
  • Explain your rationale for important design decisions.
  • Explain how the visualization and interactions helped in the analysis.
  • If filters or transformations are applied, explain what was used and in what sequence they were applied.
  • If there are anomalies shown in a visualization, explain how they are factored into the analysis.
• Give a definition of potentially-ambiguous terms used such as “uncertainty.”
  • Describe any other important assumptions you made.
• Answer the specific questions for this mini-challenge. These questions appear in the submission form.

Submitting Your Entry

1. IEEE VAST Challenge 2026 uses the Precision Conference System (PCS) to handle the submission and reviewing process. PCS is available at https://new.precisionconference.com/~vgtc/. If you do not already have a login for the system, you must register first. This can be done using the links on the sign in page. Once you are logged into your account, please click the “Submissions” button, and then select Society: VGTC, Conference/Journal: VIS 2026, and Track: VIS 2026 VAST Challenge.

2. Prepare your “Submission File”.

• Rename and complete the summary form, as mentioned above on this page.
• Create a folder on your computer with the same name as your entry name. Save the completed answer form (index.htm), your video, and your other submission images that should be linked from index.htm. Use relative links so they will still work when your materials are moved to another folder.
• Zip the entire directory and save it in a file using the same entry name, for example, UMD-Jones-MC2.zip. If your zip file is greater than 50 MB in size, please try compressing your video, or post your video or other large materials on the internet instead of including it in your zip file. The submission system can only accept files smaller than 50 MB.

Note: Each entry must be packaged and uploaded to PCS as a .zip archive. Other formats such as .rar and .tar are not acceptable.

Optional Paper for Proceedings (Two-Page Max)

Participants may publish a two-page summary of their submission in the VAST Challenge 2026 proceedings, which will be available on IEEE Xplore after IEEE VIS 2026. These summaries allow the contestants to give a general overview of their approaches and tools, highlight novel features, provide references to papers and other relevant work and describe any new discoveries made while working through the Challenge problem. The two-page papers will be reviewed by the VAST Challenge Committee but not undergo a peer review phase like the actual Challenge submissions. The VAST Challenge chairs may request or require changes to any two-page papers that contain formatting or content issues before publication.

The two-page summary paper must be formatted properly according to the IEEE VGTC Conference Style Guidelines (https://tc.computer.org/vgtc/publications/conference/). Please review this template, as it may be updated from VAST Challenge contests in the past. Note that only teams with complete submissions (i.e., zip file with materials submitted through PCS on time) will be able to submit a two-page paper, one paper per entry.

In order to give Challenge teams time to focus on the main Challenge submissions first, the optional two-page papers are due a couple weeks after the entry deadline, on August 14, 2026. They are submitted on the same PCS site as the original submission (the later paper deadline is the “camera-ready” deadline).