Written and maintained byCASRAI Editorial Board
The International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) is the world’s longest-running and premier academic conference dedicated to the advancement of artificial intelligence research. Established in 1969, IJCAI serves as the flagship gathering where computer scientists, roboticists, and computational theorists present peer-reviewed breakthroughs across the full breadth of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Within computer science academia, conferences represent the primary mechanism for archival publication and priority establishment. As an archival venue, IJCAI pairs highly competitive double-blind peer review with comprehensive proceedings, providing international researchers with top-tier scientific recognition, journal fast-tracking opportunities, and influential cross-disciplinary workshops.
What IJCAI Is
IJCAI is both a prestigious annual scientific conference and an independent non-profit academic organization (IJCAI Organization). Unlike specialized sub-field meetings that concentrate exclusively on narrow computational techniques, IJCAI covers the entire spectrum of intelligent systems, including knowledge representation, automated reasoning, heuristic search, constraint satisfaction, natural language processing, computer vision, multi-agent systems, robotics, and ethical AI governance.
What is the name of the international conference on artificial intelligence?
The full official name of the conference is the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, commonly referred to by its acronym IJCAI. In years where the meeting is organized collaboratively with regional associations, the conference title reflects the partnership, such as IJCAI-ECAI 2026 organized jointly with the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI).
Who Runs It and What It Covers
IJCAI is governed by the IJCAI Board of Trustees, an international body of distinguished artificial intelligence scholars, alongside a permanent Secretariat. The conference was founded in 1969 in Washington, D.C., operating biennially in odd-numbered years until 2015, after which it transitioned to an annual conference schedule to keep pace with rapid scientific developments.
IJCAI convenes in major global research hubs across North America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania. Recent and upcoming conference locations include:
- IJCAI 2024: Jeju Island, South Korea (33rd conference)
- IJCAI 2025: Montreal, Canada (34th conference, August 16–22, 2025)
- IJCAI-ECAI 2026: Bremen, Germany (35th conference, August 15–21, 2026)
- IJCAI 2027: Kyoto, Japan and Hengqin, China (36th conference)
Where will IJCAI 2027 be held?
IJCAI 2027 will be hosted using an innovative two-site international format. The main conference program takes place in Kyoto, Japan, from August 7 to August 13, 2027, followed immediately by an official satellite symposium held in Hengqin, China, from August 15 to August 17, 2027.
How to Submit and Publish at IJCAI
Publishing an archival paper in IJCAI requires navigating a rigorous, multi-stage peer-review protocol designed to uphold scientific excellence across thousands of annual submissions.
Submission Format and Track Structure
The IJCAI program is organized into multiple submission tracks:
- Main Track: Archival research reporting novel, significant, and previously unpublished technical results.
- Special Tracks: Themed tracks addressing strategic interdisciplinary challenges, including AI for Social Good (AI4Good), Human-Centred AI, AI and Health, AI and Robotics, and Critical Enabling Technologies (AI4Tech).
- Survey Track: Comprehensive, critical syntheses of mature or rapidly evolving subfields of AI.
- Invited and Non-Archival Tracks: The Journal Track, Sister Conferences Track, Demonstrations Track, and Doctoral Consortium.
Main track submissions adhere to a strict page limit: manuscripts must not exceed 9 pages in total, configured as up to 7 pages for the technical body and contributions, plus up to 2 pages reserved exclusively for references and optional ethical impact statements.
The Primary Paper Initiative and Submission Fee Policy
To address ballooning submission volumes and incentivize peer-review sustainability, IJCAI introduced the Primary Paper Initiative beginning with the IJCAI-ECAI 2026 cycle in Bremen, Germany. The policy establishes clear economic and procedural guidelines:
- USD 100 Submission Fee: A submission fee of USD 100 applies to submissions in the Main Track, Survey Track, and Special Tracks.
- Primary Paper Waiver: The USD 100 fee is completely waived for any submission designated as a “primary paper”—defined as a manuscript where none of the co-authors appear on any other paper submitted to that conference cycle.
- Reviewer Recognition Allocation: 100% of the proceeds generated from non-primary paper fees are dedicated to the Peer Reviewers Recognition Policy, funding direct honoraria, registration subsidies, and formal recognition for diligent program committee reviewers.
- Exempt Categories: The Journal Track, Sister Conferences Track, Competitions, Demos, and Doctoral Consortium are entirely exempt from the fee requirement.
Two-Phase Review and Resubmission Transparency
IJCAI employs double-blind review managed through CMT or OpenReview. Reviewing executes in two distinct phases: Phase 1 involves a summary reject screening conducted by two Program Committee (PC) members; papers failing Phase 1 are rejected early without rebuttal. Manuscripts passing Phase 1 advance to full evaluation by multiple PC reviewers, Senior Program Committee (SPC) members, and Area Chairs (ACs), complete with an author response period.
Furthermore, IJCAI enforces strict resubmission transparency: authors submitting manuscripts previously rejected by another peer-reviewed venue (such as NeurIPS, ICML, or AAAI) within the preceding 12 months must explicitly declare the venue and upload past reviews alongside a detailed response explaining revisions.
Strengths and Limits
Understanding IJCAI’s institutional standing allows researchers and department chairs to properly contextualize paper acceptances within promotion, tenure, and grant evaluations.
Key Strengths
- CORE A* Classification: Under the Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia (CORE) rankings, IJCAI is designated as an A* conference, placing it in the top ~4% of all computer science venues globally.
- Broad Topical Scope: Unlike venues focused narrowly on deep learning, IJCAI actively accepts symbolic reasoning, automated planning, logic programming, and cognitive architectures.
- Open Access Archival Proceedings: All accepted papers are published open-access in the official IJCAI Proceedings repository (
ijcai.org/proceedings/) without download fees or reader paywalls. - Journal Fast-Track Options: Outstanding papers from the Main Track receive invitations for expedited, direct review in premier archival journals.
What are artificial intelligence journals?
In addition to conference proceedings, the artificial intelligence discipline maintains archival journals that publish longer, exhaustive theoretical treatises and extended benchmark evaluations. Premier artificial intelligence journals include:
- Artificial Intelligence Journal (AIJ): Published by Elsevier; the flagship foundational journal of the field since 1970.
- Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR): An independent, diamond open-access journal founded in 1993.
- IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI): High-impact journal bridging computer vision and pattern recognition.
- Machine Learning: Established Springer journal focusing on statistical learning theory.
Through the IJCAI Journal Track, authors who recently published unpresented papers in AIJ or JAIR are invited to present their findings directly to the IJCAI conference audience.
Is ICML an A* conference?
Yes. Both the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) and IJCAI are classified as A* conferences under the CORE international ranking system. While ICML specializes heavily in empirical and theoretical machine learning algorithms, IJCAI encompasses the wider discipline of general artificial intelligence. Both maintain acceptance rates typically ranging between 15% and 22%.
Alternatives to IJCAI
Scholars submitting work in artificial intelligence balance multiple competitive publication avenues. The table below compares IJCAI with leading peer venues:
| Conference | Primary Focus | CORE Rank | Publication Model | Key Differentiator |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IJCAI | Broad general artificial intelligence | A* | Open Access (IJCAI Proceedings) | Primary Paper Initiative; global rotation |
| AAAI | Broad general artificial intelligence | A* | Open Access (AAAI Press) | North America–anchored; winter timing |
| NeurIPS | Neural systems and machine learning | A* | Open Access (NeurIPS Foundation) | Massive scale; December meeting |
| ICML | Machine learning and statistical theory | A* | Open Access (PMLR proceedings) | Specialized algorithmic learning focus |
| ECAI | European artificial intelligence research | A | Open Access (IOS Press / EurAI) | European regional biennial flagship |
When preparing manuscripts across computational venues, authors frequently consult specialized guides such as structuring an ICML position paper or analyzing historical NeurIPS acceptance rates. Authors must also comply with contemporary ethical publishing standards, such as the Elsevier generative AI authorship policy and international risk frameworks like NIST AI RMF vs ISO 42001.
Frequently Asked Questions
The premier international conference is the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), organized annually by the IJCAI non-profit organization.
IJCAI 2027 will take place in Kyoto, Japan (Main Conference, August 7–13, 2027) with an official satellite symposium in Hengqin, China (August 15–17, 2027).
What is the IJCAI Primary Paper Initiative?
Beginning with IJCAI-ECAI 2026, IJCAI instituted a USD 100 paper submission fee that is completely waived for primary papers (papers where no co-author is listed on another submission to that cycle). All fee proceeds directly support reviewer recognition and peer-review quality.
Artificial intelligence journals are peer-reviewed archival periodicals, such as the Artificial Intelligence Journal (AIJ) and the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), that publish extended theoretical and experimental manuscripts.
Is ICML an A* conference?
Yes. Both ICML and IJCAI hold the top-tier A* ranking in the CORE international conference ranking audit.
Sources
- IJCAI. (2025). Primary Paper Initiative: IJCAI-ECAI 2026. 2026.ijcai.org: https://2026.ijcai.org/primary-paper-initiative/ (Accessed: 2026-11-07).
- IJCAI. (2025). IJCAI-ECAI 2026 Call for Papers (Main Track). 2026.ijcai.org: https://2026.ijcai.org/ijcai-ecai-2026-call-for-papers-main-track/ (Accessed: 2026-11-07).
- IJCAI. (2026). About IJCAI and Conference History. ijcai.org: https://www.ijcai.org/ (Accessed: 2026-11-07).
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