ELLIS Sites ICML Fest 2026: Local Dialogue, Continent-Wide Exchange

Building on the inaugural success of 2025, this decentralised initiative continued to offer ELLIS researchers across Europe the opportunity to present their latest work in a local, collaborative environment before the main conference began.

A Collaborative Scientific Exchange Across Europe

Hosted and locally organised at 13 ELLIS Sites, the ELLIS Sites ICML Fest 2026 once again featured a series of open poster sessions designed to foster dialogue and scientific exchange. First extended to the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) in 2025 alongside the long-running Pre-NeurIPS Fest, the format has now firmly established itself within the ELLIS calendar. These events not only allowed researchers to locally receive feedback from peers but also invited broader engagement with the public and the wider AI community - strengthening networks and accelerating collaboration across the European AI ecosystem.

This year, the Fest brought together approximately 1,100 attendees across all participating sites, who explored around 190 posters contributed by ELLIS Members. Participants had the opportunity to explore a broad array of cutting-edge research, including accepted papers to the ICML 2026 conference, as well as contributions to workshops and other major venues in machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Participating Sites in 2026

The following ELLIS Sites hosted ICML Fest events in 2026:

Local Formats, Shared Purpose

Across locations, ELLIS Sites ICML Fest took on distinct local forms while sharing a common goal.

• Unit Berlin's session covered a wide range of topics, including multilayer fusion for vision transformers, multimodal learning, optimal transport-based domain alignment, algorithmic reasoning in language models, Hamiltonian flow maps for molecular dynamics, steering in reasoning models, mechanistic monitoring of LLM agents, PDE-constrained solvers using Lie symmetries, federated sampling of molecular conformers, interpretability of physics-informed neural networks, and hyperbolic multimodal learning on EEG data.

• Unit Darmstadt held its "Post-CVPR Pre-ICML Poster Session," organised in collaboration with Zuse School ELIZA and hessian.AI, continuing the site's tradition of connecting local researchers with scholars from across Germany.

• Unit Freiburg, together with Unit Darmstadt and ELIZA, contributed to a joint collaborative effort spanning the three partners.

• Unit Graz held a poster session focused on providing ample time for connection and collaboration, receiving strong positive feedback from the community on the value of more localised engagement.

• Unit Jena hosted engaging discussions around recent computer vision and Earth system-related posters, complemented by snacks, drinks, and music.

• Unit Lausanne's poster session showcased a broad range of research from the local ELLIS community, spanning machine learning theory, high-dimensional learning, attention and scaling laws, generative and diffusion models, representation learning, reinforcement learning, multi-agent learning, vision-language models, graph generation, explainable AI, mechanistic interpretability, affective computing, and world modelling - bringing together researchers from multiple labs and disciplines across EPFL.

• Unit London gathered approximately 100 researchers across academia and industry. Building on a successful half-day workshop the previous year, the site held its first full-day workshop in 2026, featuring three keynote talks, eight student spotlight talks, and a well-attended poster session with more than 30 posters.

• Unit Modena focused its session on multimodal large language models and machine learning theory.

• At Unit Munich, the Pre-ICML poster session again ran alongside MCML's Munich AI Day, this year held on 23 June and co-organised with Konrad Zuse School ELIZA. Over 400 participants attended throughout the day, with the session covering 39 presentations in total - 29 contributed posters, including preprints and work from other venues, alongside 10 papers accepted to ICML.

• At the ELLIS Institute Tübingen, the event showcased a mix of ICLR papers, preprints, and robotics research from MPI-IS Stuttgart, totalling 35 posters, as part of a larger MPI-IS summer event with notably high overall attendance.

• Unit Vienna continued its established tradition, offering researchers with accepted ICML papers the chance to present their work locally before travelling to the conference, in an afternoon open to the whole ELLIS community and combining posters, conversation, and networking.

Why Local Exchange Matters

Local exchange plays a critical role in the research ecosystem. Presenting work in a local setting enables early-stage feedback and peer review, allowing researchers to refine their contributions ahead of major conferences. It also fosters interdisciplinary dialogue and strengthens regional collaboration within the ELLIS network. By lowering barriers related to travel, visas, or funding, local events further promote accessibility and inclusion across the AI community.

The ELLIS Society proudly organises the Sites ICML Fest as a platform that highlights the strength and diversity of AI research in Europe, bringing together emerging talent, leading scientists, and the broader community in celebration of scientific innovation.