ESR · NeurIPS 2026
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2nd ESR Workshop · NeurIPS 2026

Call for Papers

We welcome work on spatial understanding, reasoning, and generation for embodied agents and world models: new methods, benchmarks, analyses, and position papers.

Deadline Sep 5, 2026 4–8 pages Double-blind Non-archival

Scope

What we are looking for

Embodied spatial reasoning is the ability to interpret the positions, orientations, physical properties, and temporal dynamics of an agent and its surrounding objects in 3D space.

Work on this topic remains fragmented: embodied agents derive spatial reasoning from multimodal alignment, while world models extract priors from video, with no shared interface for spatial, physical, and temporal modeling. The paper track invites submissions that address this gap: from new methods and benchmarks to analyses and position papers that reframe the problem.

There is a single submission format: 4–8 pages, so both short contributions (position papers and extended abstracts) and full papers are welcome. We uphold high standards of review, with impartial and constructive feedback for every submission.

We would rather discuss an early idea than miss it. Work in progress, preliminary findings, negative results, arXiv preprints, and papers rejected elsewhere are all welcome: the workshop is non-archival, so presenting here leaves your options at other venues open.

Topics of interest

  1. 01 Spatial understanding and reasoning in embodied agents
  2. 02 Physically-grounded video world models
  3. 03 Object permanence and spatial memory
  4. 04 Physical consistency and long-horizon temporal coherence
  5. 05 Generative and discriminative 3D modeling
  6. 06 Long-horizon planning and interaction in 3D space

Guidelines

Submission guidelines

  • Format A single submission format, covering short papers, position papers, extended abstracts, and full papers alike.
  • Length Submissions of 4–8 pages are allowed. References and the optional appendix do not count toward the page limit.
  • Template Use the NeurIPS 2026 template, following the official NeurIPS 2026 Call for Papers ↗. Submit a single PDF through OpenReview.
  • Anonymity Review is double-blind: reviewers do not see who the authors are, and authors do not see who the reviewers are. Remove author names, affiliations, acknowledgments, and funding information from the main paper and from all supplementary materials, and phrase references to your own earlier work in the third person.
  • Preprints Posting your work on arXiv does not conflict with double-blind review here. Reviewers are asked not to search for a submission's authors, and no submission will be rejected because a preprint exists.
  • Supplementary Supplementary material may be submitted through OpenReview, but reviewers are not required to consider material outside the main paper.
  • Code & data Links to code and data are welcome and may be included alongside the PDF. Anonymous repositories are allowed.

Policies

Publication and submission policies

  • Archival status All accepted papers are non-archival and will not appear in the official NeurIPS proceedings. Authors retain copyright and may submit an extended version to a future archival venue, subject to that venue's policies.
  • Visibility Making an accepted paper publicly visible on OpenReview is optional and left to the authors. Reviews are not made public, and rejected submissions and their reviews remain private.
  • Prior work Most of what authors hesitate to send is welcome here: work in progress, preliminary findings, negative results, arXiv preprints, and papers rejected elsewhere. Following NeurIPS workshop policy, we cannot accept work already published at another machine learning or related conference, or work presented at the main NeurIPS 2026 conference: the workshop is a venue for ideas still in motion rather than for finalized results.
  • Concurrent work Submitting the same work to another venue at the same time is fine. Authors are responsible for complying with the other venue's dual-submission and prior-publication policies.

Key dates

Submission timeline

  1. Aug 5, 2026 Submissions open
  2. Sep 5, 2026 Submission deadline
  3. Sep 25, 2026 Acceptance notification
  4. Oct 15, 2026 Award notification
  5. Oct 25, 2026 Camera-ready

Unless otherwise specified, all deadlines are 23:59 Anywhere on Earth (AoE). The workshop takes place in Sydney on one of the NeurIPS 2026 workshop days, December 11–12, 2026; the exact day will be announced.

Submit

Submit a paper

Paper Submission openreview.net Submitting a demo instead? Call for Demos

Submissions are managed through OpenReview. Questions about the call can be sent to wufeim@gmail.com.