PoliticalNLP 2026

PoliticalNLP 2026 is the third edition of the international workshop dedicated to the intersection of Natural Language Processing, political science, legal studies, media analysis, and computational social science.

Following successful editions at LREC 2022 (Marseille) and LREC-COLING 2024 (Torino), this year’s workshop focuses on:

Large Language Models (LLMs) and Generative AIArtificial Intelligence now play a pivotal role in shaping public opinion, political narratives, and civic engagement. While they open exciting avenues for computational political analysis, they also raise critical challenges related to bias, cultural representation, explainability, misinformation, and democratic accountability.

PoliticalNLP 2026 brings together researchers and practitioners to explore these questions through responsible, interdisciplinary, and impactful NLP research.

Important Dates

• Paper Submission deadline (short and long papers): 16 February 2026
• Notification of acceptance: 11 March 2026
• Camera-ready papers due: 30 March 2026
• Early registration deadline: To be confirmed by LREC organisers
• PoliticalNLP 2026 Workshop: 11–12 May or 16 May 2026 (final allocation pending)
  

All deadlines are 11:59 PM AoE (“anywhere on Earth”).

Submission

Submission is electronic via the Softconf START system: 🔗 https://softconf.com/lrec2026/PoliticalNLP2026/

Topics of Interest include (but are not limited to):

• Explainable, fair, and trustworthy NLP for political and electoral data
  
• Culturally-aware and culturally-adaptive LLMs for political discourse and cross-cultural reasoning
  
• Bias, misinformation, propaganda, and ethical risks in LLM-based political analysis
  
• NLP for migration studies, governance, policy analysis, and social forecasting
  
• Multilingual, cross-cultural, and low-resource political NLP
  
• Generative AIArtificial Intelligence for deliberative democracy, policy modelling, and narrative analysis
  
• Legal and regulatory frameworks for AIArtificial Intelligence in governance
  
• Annotation methodologies, datasets, and benchmarks for political communication research
  
• Reproducibility, transparency, and responsible AIArtificial Intelligence practices
  
• Demonstrations of datasets, tools, and civic technology resources

Workshop Organizers                                       

General Chair: Haithem Afli, ADAPT Centre, Munster Technological University, Ireland

Program Chairs: 

Houda Bouamor, Carnegie Mellon University, Qatar

Wajdi Zaghouani — Northwestern University in Qatar

Sahar Ghannay, Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, LISN, France

Cristina Blasi Casagran, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain

Shehenaz Hossain — Munster Technological University, Ireland

Program Committee

Bruno Andrade, Munster Technological University, Ireland

Lenka Dražanová, European University Institute, Italy

Georgios Stavropoulos, The Centre for Research and Technology, Greece

Andrea Iana, University of Mannheim, Germany

Valentin Barrieren, Telecom ParisTech, France

Mohammed Hasanuzzaman, Munster Technological University, Ireland

Patrick Paroubek, Paris-Saclay University, CNRS, LISN, France

Suman Adhya, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, India

Valentin Barriere, Centro Nacional de Inteligencia Artificial, Santiago, Chile