The 2026 Communication by Gaze Interaction (COGAIN) Symposium
Marrakech, Morocco, June 1st - 4th 2026
| Papers due: | March 8, 2026 |
| Notifications: | March 20, 2026 |
| Camera-ready: | March 27, 2026 |
The 2026 Communication by Gaze Interaction (COGAIN) symposium is organized by the COGAIN Association and will be co-located with ETRA 2026, the ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications. COGAIN 2026 will take place in Marrakech, Morocco (in-person) on June 1st - 4th 2026.
The COGAIN Association is a network of excellence that integrates cutting-edge expertise on interface technologies for the benefit of users with and without disabilities. By integrating research activities such as this annual symposium, the network aims to develop new technologies and systems, improve existing gaze-based interaction techniques, and facilitate the implementation of systems for everyday communication. COGAIN has a long history: founded in 2008 as successor of the COGAIN project -- a Network of Excellence supported by the European Commission’s Information Society Technologies (IST) 6th Framework Program, which ran from 2004 to 2009 -- the COGAIN Association aims to promote research and development in the field of gaze-based interaction in computer-aided communication and control.
The COGAIN symposium is an annual event focusing on all aspects of gaze interaction related to eye-controlled assistive technology and has been continuously co-located with the ACM Symposium of Eye Tracking Research \& Applications (ETRA) since 2018. Because of its strong identity, the symposium is the right venue to present advances in all of the areas listed below that lead to new capabilities in gaze interaction, gaze-enhanced applications, gaze-contingent devices, etc. Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:
The COGAIN Symposium has a tradition of having a special theme that addresses current research trends and challenges. While the COGAIN Symposium accepts papers on any of the topics listed above, the theme is used to shape the discussions at the symposium and to incentivize authors to contribute their ideas and work.
The 2026 theme, Beyond Eye Tracking, encourages the community to move past viewing gaze solely as a measurement technology and toward understanding gaze as a fundamental component of human experience. Eye movements shape how people perceive scenes, interpret social signals, anticipate events, and engage with digital environments. At the same time, computational systems increasingly use gaze to personalize content, adapt interfaces, and support accessibility. This theme invites interdisciplinary work that examines gaze as a cognitive, social, and interactive phenomenon, one that is essential for understanding human behavior and for designing future technologies.
The COGAIN symposium works as a half-day mini-conference, and authors have their submissions go through a double-blind review process managed by program chairs selected from the COGAIN Association. Selected authors are invited to present in-person, together with a keynote and panel sessions on current and future challenges of gaze-based interaction and eye tracking technologies.
We are looking for contributions that lead to interesting discussions. To that end, we encourage submissions from early academics and graduate students, from late-breaking work (under two pages) to traditional paper contributions (under eight pages) – in single-column format, not counting references.
Regardless of the type of your submission, you will be given a chance to present your work as a talk.
Submissions should have a size that fits their contribution, be anonymized, and be submitted via PCS (Society: ETRA, Conference: ETRA 2026, Track: ETRA 2026 COGAIN) using the ACM article template. The timeline for this is as follows (all times are AoE):
Accepted papers will be included in the ETRA Workshop Proceedings, and we require that at least one author per submission register for the symposium.