The ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW) is the premier venue for human-centered research in the design, use, and evaluation of technologies that support or affect social, cooperative, and collaborative practices in groups, organizations, communities, and networks. Bringing together top researchers and practitioners, CSCW 2026 will explore topics across sociotechnical domains of work, home, education, healthcare, the arts, design, entertainment, and ethics, including social computing and social media, crowdsourcing, and technologies for co-located or remote collaboration, communication, education, work articulation, coordination, awareness, and information sharing.

Papers are expected to report on novel results from human-centered research discussing the design, development, use, and/or analysis of CSCW and social computing systems; or introduce new human-centered approaches to the conceptualization or critical analysis of such systems. Submissions exploring how computing technologies — including those linked to recent developments in AI, machine learning, robotics, and AR/VR — relate to questions of race, indigeneity, gender, and the environment are particularly encouraged, providing they are properly contextualized within cooperative, collaborative, or social computing issues. Submissions by members of underrepresented groups are particularly welcome. Authors exploring historical and sociotechnical perspectives on CSCW systems are also encouraged to submit.

In general, contributions must have a focus on social aspects of technology mediation and be properly contextualized in the CSCW literature, with clear reference to CSCW concepts and/or theories informing, being affected or being proposed. Please note that papers whose research contributions are primarily of relevance or benefit to individual users will be considered out of scope. For example, this would include papers whose major contribution is on user research findings that inform the design of a system primarily focused on benefiting a sole, individual user. This would also include research on a collaboration between a single user and any number of AI agents. Additionally, systems-based or algorithmic research not making explicit how it involves aspects of cooperative, collaborative or social computing are not within the scope of CSCW.

We invite contributions to CSCW across a variety of human-centered research techniques, methods, approaches, and domains, including:

    Social and crowd computing. Studies, theories, designs, mechanisms, systems, and/or infrastructures addressing social media, social networking, wikis, blogs, online gaming, crowdsourcing, collective intelligence, virtual worlds, or collaborative information behaviors.
    CSCW and social computing system development. Hardware, architectures, infrastructures, interaction design, technical foundations, algorithms, and/or toolkits that are explored and discussed within the context of building new social and collaborative systems and experiences.
    Methodologies and tools. Novel human-centered methods, or combinations of approaches and tools used in building collaborative systems or studying their use.
    Critical, historical, ethnographic analyses. Studies of technologically enabled social, cooperative, and collaborative practices within and beyond work settings illuminating their historical, social, and material specificity, and/or exploring their political or ethical dimensions.
    Empirical investigations. Findings, guidelines, and/or studies of social practices, communication, cooperation, collaboration, or use, as related to CSCW and social technologies.
    Domain-specific social, cooperative, and collaborative applications. Including applications to healthcare, transportation, design, manufacturing, gaming, ICT4D, sustainability, education, accessibility, global collaboration, or other domains.
    Ethics and policy implications. Analysis of the implications of sociotechnical systems in social, cooperative and collaborative practices, as well as the algorithms that shape them.
    CSCW and social computing systems based on emerging technologies. Including mobile and ubiquitous computing, game engines, virtual worlds, multi-touch, novel display technologies, vision and gesture recognition, big data, MOOCs, crowd labor markets, SNSs, computer-aided or robotically-supported work, and sensing systems.
    Crossing boundaries. Studies, prototypes, or other investigations that explore interactions across fields of research, disciplines, distances, languages, generations, and cultures to help better understand how CSCW and social systems might help transcend social, temporal, and/or spatial boundaries.

Send queries about paper submissions to papers2026@cscw.acm.org.
To promote work-life balance, we have set all deadlines on Tuesdays to avoid weekends at any time zone. Note that the submission system is usually opened two weeks before each deadline (submission and revision).