The 28th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI 2026) will be held in Napoli, Italy. ICMI is the premier international forum for advancing research at the intersection of multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) and social interaction to create technically innovative, effective, and human-centered multimodal interactive systems. A unique aspect of ICMI is its multidisciplinary nature, bringing together research in AI, multimodal data processing, and human-human interaction to bridge behavioral understanding with technology, posing an eye towards impactful applications that benefit people and society.

Novelty will be evaluated along two dimensions: scientific novelty and technical novelty. Accepted papers at ICMI 2026 must demonstrate novelty in at least one of these two dimensions.

The theme of this year’s conference is “Context and Cultural Awareness for Multimodal Interaction”, to explore how context and cultural factors influence multimodal interaction systems, including their design, implementation, and evaluation. We welcome papers that address the integration of contextual understanding, such as environmental, social, and emotional factors, into multimodal interaction systems. We also encourage contributions that explore cultural considerations in the development and deployment of interactive technologies.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Affective computing and interaction
User-adaptive systems
Cognitive modelling and multimodal interaction
Context-aware modelling
Cross-cultural design and evaluation
Gesture, touch, and haptics
Healthcare, assistive technologies
Human communication dynamics
Human-robot/agent multimodal interaction
Human-centred AI and ethics
Interaction with a smart environment
Machine learning for multimodal interaction
Mobile and wearable multimodal systems
Multimodal behaviour generation
Multimodal datasets and validation
Multimodal dialogue modeling
Multimodal fusion and representation
Multimodal interactive applications
Novel multimodal datasets
Spoken/visual behaviours in social interaction
System components and multimodal platforms
Virtual/augmented reality and multimodal interaction

Commitment to ethical conduct is mandatory, and submissions must adhere to ethical standards, in particular when human-derived data are employed. Authors are encouraged to consult the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (https://ethics.acm.org/).