Computational Creativity (CC) is a field rooted in scientific disciplines such as Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, Engineering, Design, Psychology, and Philosophy, each of which explores the potential for computers to be creative – either in partnership with humans or as autonomous creators in their own right.

The 17th International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC’26) welcomes papers on different aspects of CC, such as principles, theories and models of creativity in computers, frameworks that offer conceptual insight and computational rigor for describing and analysing machine (and human) creativity, systems that exhibit creative autonomy or act as creative partners for human creators, methodologies for building or evaluating CC systems, as well as approaches to teaching CC in schools and universities or to promoting societal uptake of CC as a field and as a technology.

Submission Guidelines

We welcome the submission of five different types of full papers. During your submission, please indicate the category in which your paper best fits:

• Technical papers: these are papers posing and addressing hypotheses about aspects of creative behaviour in computational systems. The emphasis here is on using solid experimentation, computational models, formal proof, and/or argumentation that clearly demonstrates advancement in the state of the art or current thinking in CC research. Strong evaluation of approaches through comparative, statistical, social, or other means is essential.
• System or Resource description papers: these are papers describing the building and deployment of a creative system or resource to produce artefacts of potential cultural value in one or more domains. The emphasis here is on presenting engineering achievement, technical difficulties encountered and overcome, techniques employed, reusable resources built, and general findings about how to get computational systems to produce valuable results. Presentation of results from the system or resource is expected. While full evaluation of the approaches employed is not essential if the technical achievement is very high, some evaluation is expected to show the contribution to CC of this work.
• Study papers: these are papers which draw on allied fields such as psychology, philosophy, cognitive science, mathematics, humanities, the arts, and so on; or which appeal to broader areas of AI and Computer Science in general; or which appeal to studies of the field of CC as a whole. The emphasis here is on presenting enlightening novel perspectives related to the building, assessment, or deployment of systems ranging from autonomously creative systems to creativity support tools. Such perspectives can be presented through a variety of approaches including ethnographic studies, thought experiments, comparisons with studies of human creativity, and surveys. The contribution of the paper to CC should be made clear in every case.
• Cultural application papers: these are papers presenting the use of creative software in a cultural setting, for example via art exhibitions/books, concerts/recordings/scores, poetry or story readings/anthologies, cookery nights/books, results for scientific journals or scientific practice, released games/game jam entries, and so on. The emphasis here is on a clear description of the role of the system in the given context, the results of the system in the setting, technical details of inclusion of the system, and evaluative feedback from the experience garnered from public audiences, critics, experts, stakeholders, and other interested parties.
• Position papers: these are papers presenting an opinion on some aspect of the culture of CC research, including discussions of future directions, speculative explorations of the impact of state-of-the-art approaches, past triumphs or mistakes, and current issues. The emphasis here is on carefully arguing a position; highlighting or exposing previously hidden or misunderstood issues or ideas; and providing thought leadership for the field, either in a general fashion or in a specific setting. While opinions need not be substantiated through formalization or experimentation, any justification of a point of view will need to draw on a thorough knowledge of the field of CC and of overlapping areas, and provide relevant motivations and arguments.

• ICCC is a conference that emphasises the empirical and theoretical evaluation of technical systems, results and outcomes, in an ethical and scientific fashion. Evaluation is expected in Technical papers (strong evaluation) and in System or Resource description papers. Although evaluation is not required in other types of papers, the contribution of the paper to CC should be made clear.

  All submissions will be reviewed in terms of quality, impact, and relevance to the area of Computational Creativity.

List of Topics

• Foundations of Computational Creativity: theories, models, and principles of computational creativity.
• Interdisciplinary Perspectives: perspectives on computational creativity which draw from philosophical and/or sociological studies in the context of creative AI systems.
• Computational Paradigms: computational approaches for modelling cognitive aspects of creativity, such as heuristic search, analogical and meta-level reasoning, cognitive architectures, and re-representation.
• Human-Machine Co-Creativity: systems, studies, frameworks, or methodologies related to co-creativity between humans and AI, with emphasis on systems in which the machine acts as a creative partner.
• Social Models: computational models of social aspects of creativity, including: social creativity, the diffusion of ideas, collaboration, team dynamics, and creativity in social settings.
• Psychological Factors: computational models of psychological factors that enhance creativity, including emotion, surprise (unexpectedness), reflection, conflict, diversity, motivation, knowledge, intuition, reward structures. Additionally, social or experiential factors related to novelty and originality, such as innovation, improvisation, and virtuosity.
• Societal Impact: ethical considerations in the design, deployment or testing of creative AI systems, as well as studies that explore the societal impact of computational creativity and generative AI.
• Computational Creativity Evaluation: metrics, frameworks, formalisms and methodologies for the evaluation of creativity in computational systems, or for the evaluation of how such systems are perceived/accepted in society.
• Applications of Computational Creativity: computational applications of creativity in areas such as music, language (e.g, narrative, poetry, humor), games, visual arts, design, architecture, entertainment, education, mathematical invention, scientific discovery, programming. Applications should be evaluated for their creativity using methods of the CC field, and the papers should carry a message relevant for the CC community.
• Data and Creativity: data science approaches to computational creativity: resource development and data gathering/knowledge curation for creative AI. There is a need for datasets and resources that are scalable, extensible and freely available/open-source.
• Provocations: raising new issues not on this list that bring the foundations of the discipline into question or throw new light on seemingly settled debates.

A note on generative AI models: while the study of generative AI models is both welcomed and encouraged, such models and their application must be properly situated in the CC literature and evaluated according to acceptable practices in the field. Papers that fail to do this are unlikely to be reviewed favorably.

Organization

Local chairs

• Pedro Martins, Univerdade de Coimbra, Portugal

• João Cunha, University of Coimbra, Portugal

Program chairs

• Hannu Toivonen, University of Helsinki, Finland

• Anna Kantosalo, Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences / University of Helsinki, Finland

• Hugo Gonçalo Oliveira, Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal

Publicity & Social chairs

• Tiago Martins, University of Coimbra, Portugal

• Thales Pessanha, University of Coimbra, Portugal

• Pedro Garruço, University of Coimbra, Portugal

• José Pedro Lopes, University of Coimbra, Portugal

Publications chair

• Ana Alves, University of Coimbra, Portugal

Webmaster

• Luís Espírito Santo, University of Coimbra, Portugal

More Information

More information on the paper types and submission process can be found at: https://computationalcreativity.net/iccc26/full-papers/