Invitation
We invite researchers, practitioners, policymakers, community stakeholders, and industry leaders to join us at REACH-AI 2026 — a workshop dedicated to advancing methodologies, datasets, benchmarks, and evaluation frameworks for culturally aware and socially responsible generative AI systems.
Recent advances in Generative AI and Large Language Models have transformed information access, knowledge discovery, decision support, and human-computer interaction. Despite remarkable progress, existing evaluation frameworks and benchmarks often fail to adequately assess how these systems perform across diverse cultural, linguistic, socioeconomic, and community contexts. As GenAI technologies become increasingly integrated into education, healthcare, government, social services, and everyday life, ensuring cultural competence, fairness, inclusiveness, and trustworthiness has become a critical research challenge.
The REACH-AI 2026 Workshop aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue across AI, information retrieval, knowledge management, NLP, HCI, social sciences, public policy, and community-engaged research. Motivated by the REACH GenAI Consortium — a collaboration between Google Research and twelve Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) — the workshop focuses on culturally grounded datasets, community-informed taxonomies, evaluation frameworks, and human-centered assessment protocols for measuring cultural competency in AI systems.
This workshop will be held in conjunction with CIKM 2026 in Rome, Italy. We warmly invite you to contribute original research, position papers, system demonstrations, datasets, benchmark papers, and case studies that advance the evaluation and development of culturally competent AI.
Workshop Format
The workshop will feature:
- Keynote presentations by leading experts in trustworthy and culturally competent AI
- Research paper presentations
- Panel discussions involving academic, industry, and community representatives
- Interactive breakout sessions focused on benchmark design and evaluation challenges
- Community-building activities to foster interdisciplinary collaborations
Important Dates
(Tentative — to be finalized upon workshop approval)
- Paper Submission Deadline August 24, 2026
- Notification of Acceptance September 23, 2026
- Camera-Ready Papers Due October 7, 2026
- Workshop Date November 8, 2026
Expected Outcomes
REACH-AI 2026 seeks to establish a research agenda for culturally competent generative AI, identify gaps in current evaluation methodologies, promote community-informed benchmark development, and foster collaborations among researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and community organizations. The workshop aims to contribute toward more equitable, inclusive, and trustworthy AI systems that effectively serve diverse populations worldwide.