Odyssey 2026 invites proposals for Special Sessions and Technology Evaluation Challenges that enrich the program and engage the community in cutting-edge topics related to speaker and language characterization. Ideally, proposals should be aligned with the workshop’s theme “Speech beyond words: Trustworthy Identity, Health, Emotion and more”, covering interdisciplinary topics and/or important new emerging areas in speech communication beyond ASR: speaker and language characterization, health, emotion, privacy, etc.
Session proposals must contain the following information:
- Special session title.
- Names and affiliations of the organizers (including contact information and a brief biography for each organizer).
- Up to five bullet points on what makes the session special.
- A summary (up to one page) stating the importance of the session’s topic and objectives.
- Proposal’s session format (e.g. panel, oral, posters, etc.).
- A tentative list of authors who could contribute papers to the session. Each special session is expected to allocate between 4-6 papers, unless their format allocates time to other formats than paper presentations (e.g. posters).
- A list of recommended expert reviewers (maximum 20 names), in compliance with the ISCA requirements (https://isca-speech.org/Reviewing).
Proposals will be evaluated by the organizing committee for relevance and significance to the workshop. The approved Special Sessions will become part of the official workshop program.
Papers for the approved Special Sessions must be submitted according to the same procedure as used for regular papers, and will undergo the same review process. However, Special Sessions may define different (later) dates than the main track for paper submission and acceptance/rejection notification.Proposals as well as any questions should be submitted to the Special Session Chairs: Luis Javier Rodríguez-Fuentes (University of the Basque Country) and Héctor Delgado (Microsoft, Spain) at luisjavier.rodriguez@ehu.eus and hector.delgado@microsoft.com.
Important dates
- Deadline for the submission of proposals: December 21, 2025
- Notification: January 9, 2026