We invite proposals for workshops to be held with the 34th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE’26). As the premier venue for presenting and discussing RE research and practice, RE’26 workshops offer a unique opportunity for participants to exchange innovative ideas in all areas related to RE, including but not limited to requirements elicitation, analysis, prioritization, documentation, validation, evolution, maintenance, and management.

We welcome a variety of workshop formats: while we expect traditional presentations of groundbreaking and early work papers to persist, we highly encourage to put the work back into workshop and explore the opportunities that this flexible format provides. Engage in exciting panel or open discussions, jointly design a large-scale empirical study, or commit to a constructive, interactive session with a tangible working outcome. Proposers are encouraged to align their topics with the research themes of RE’26: “Sustainability and workforce transformation in the era of generative AI: How to prepare for a future in collaboration with AI tools and assistants”. Elaborate, how contemporary requirements engineering will work with and for AI agents while maintaining human values.

Workshops at RE’26 can lead to exciting follow-up research, empirical investigations, or improvement to industry practice. They typically take up half a day or a full day, and will take place on the first two days of the conference. The ideal number of organizers for a workshop is three, and we strongly recommend not more than four organizers. Please note that organizers are not permitted to submit their own papers, unless a sound reviewing policy is established beforehand. The policy must be made explicit in the workshop proposal. Regardless of the policy, the organizers are requested to minimize these cases.

Call for Workshops

Please read the submission instructions carefully, as they have been updated from past years.

This year, we have revised some procedures in the workshop organization to make for a smoother experience at the RE conference. Particularly, we want to reduce the number of parallel sessions without sacrificing the diversity of interesting topics around which workshops are centered. Important notes and updates from previous editions include:

• We have revised the evaluation criteria for workshop proposals. Thoroughly review these and make sure they are addressed in your proposal.
• Workshops need not solely be mini-conferences. Make use of the variety of potential formats and consider alternative sessions, e.g., (panel) discussions, joint working session, etc.
• This year, we will enable a flexible scheduling mode: in addition to planning for a half day or a full day, you can request taking up only 1 or 3 sessions, or even additional sessions beyond a one day. Additionally, we will allow to adjust the length of a workshop by one session after the decision about submissions have been made. For example, when receiving fewer submissions than expected, a half-day workshop can be reduced to one session.
• Once the decision about workshops have been made, we invite the organizers of all accepted workshops to synchronize and explore the opportunity of joint keynote speeches. If two or more workshops see the opportunity to invite a prestigious speaker that could talk about a topic relevant to both or more workshops, feel free to join these sessions.

Evaluation Criteria

All workshop proposals will be reviewed by three members of the Workshops Program Committee. Acceptance will be based on the following criteria:

• Relevance: The theme and topics of interest of a workshop need to be of interest to the RE community and should be up-to-date and relevant to contemporary RE practices. Optimally, the theme and topics should be aligned with the theme of the RE’26 conference. The publicity strategy of the organizers should ensure a sufficient attendance to the workshop.
• Contribution: Workshops should provide a unique forum for the RE community to advance research and foster exchange. A workshop must entail a clear contribution that improves the conference experience.
• Feasibility: The goals, scope, and procedure of the workshop should be attainable given the capabilities of the organizers and participants.
• Inclusivity: Hosting a workshop at the International Requirements Engineering Conference comes with the opportunity and responsibility to involve the international community in a topic of interest. Workshops should, hence, make an effort to utilize this international stage and attract submissions and participants from all over our community.

Submission Instructions

To apply for the inclusion of a workshop in the workshop program of RE’26, submit a workshop proposal at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=re26 (select the option “Workshops”). Workshop proposals must not exceed four pages and must be submitted as one PDF using the IEEE conference template (find more information in the appropriate tab).

A valid proposal must contain the following sections:

1. Header: The title of the proposal should be the title and acronym of the workshop, the authors of the proposal should be the workshop organizers (name, affiliation, and email) where the corresponding contact is clearly indicated.
2. Workshop Motivation and Objectives: Explain the motivation and objectives of the workshop and related topics, describe the anticipated outcomes of the workshop (e.g., open research problems to pursue, empirical studies, etc.). If your workshop is accepted, this description will be used for early publicity.
3. Workshop History: If the workshop has been offered before, provide its history, including venues, dates, number of submissions and accepted papers, approximate attendance numbers, a link to the proceedings of the previous workshop, and, if available, a link to the website of the previous edition. Additionally, explain in what aspects the proposed workshop will differ and in what aspects it will resemble previous editions.
4. Target Audience: Specify the background required for workshop attendees. Indicate whether there will be a mix of industry and academic participants. Provide the expected number of participants (minimum and maximum). State whether the workshop is open to the public or by invitation only.
5. Workshop Format: Indicate, how many sessions (one session equals 90 minutes) the workshop will span (typically 2 = half day or 4 = full day, but other numbers are possible as well). Describe the anticipated format (e.g., paper presentations, keynotes, breakout sessions, panel discussions, joint working sessions, etc.) or the mix thereof. Outline plans for facilitating discussions between participants, interactivity, and networking.
6. Required Services: Describe the type of facilities that the workshop would need. If you require any special services (e.g., student volunteer, equipment, special room setups), describe and justify them.
7. Submission Formats: State if your workshop requires submissions, e.g., if you plan to gather to give presentations, discuss different topics, produce a paper, conduct a focus group etc. maybe submissions are not needed. For submission based workshops,, specify the number and type of papers to be solicited (e.g., extended abstracts, position papers, research papers, etc.) and list the accepted submission topics.
8. Paper Solicitation and Selection: Explain how you will attract a sufficient number of participants and, if required, submissions. Describe the paper evaluation and selection process, including a description of the program committee.
9. Risk Management: Describe how you will deal with
   • Too few submitted or accepted manuscripts,
   • Too many submitted or accepted manuscripts, and
   • Conflicts of Interests (CoIs): Describe how CoIs will be handled between authors and the PC, and describe the policy to handle submissions from the organizers, e.g., the maximum number of papers from the organizers, prevention of CoIs. We strongly recommend minimizing these cases.
10. Organizers: Provide a brief 2-3 sentence biography for each workshop organizer, highlighting their qualifications and experience in organizing scientific events and workshops. Describe the role of each organizer in the team.

If applicable, please include a section on the following matters if they apply to your proposal:

• Proceedings: We plan to publish the workshop proceedings in the IEEE Digital Library as a separate volume of the conference proceedings. If you wish to use a different publishing plan, describe how you intend to disseminate the workshop proceedings. Mention the team member from the organization team who will be responsible for handling the proceedings.

Responsibilities

If a workshop proposal is accepted, workshop organizers are responsible for the following in due time:

• Creating a website for the workshop and a call for papers (CfP)
• Making the contact information of the organizing team explicit on the workshop website
• Advertising the workshop and attracting contributions
• Establishing a Program Committee with diverse membership
• Soliciting, collecting, and evaluating paper submissions
• Ensuring a transparent and fair paper selection process, including proper handling of conflicts of interest
• Notifying authors of acceptance or rejection
• Creating the workshop program
• Responding to requests from the RE’26 Workshop Co-Chairs in a timely manner
• Contributing to the data collection about the attendance and perception of the workshop. This includes distributing a feedback survey prepared by the workshop co-chairs.

For accepted workshops, the following conditions apply:

• All accepted workshops must comply with the key dates.
• All workshop participants, including organizers and keynote speakers or invited speakers, must register for the workshop.
• RE’26 reserves the right to adjust the timeframe of the workshop given the anticipated final program.
• RE’26 reserves the right to cancel workshops that fail to attract a reasonable number of submissions, lack a detailed workshop program, have organizers who do not fulfill their responsibilities in a timely manner, or have insufficient registrations after the early registration deadline.

Key Dates

Find the deadlines in the Important Dates section of this page. All deadlines are 23:59 Anywhere on Earth (Standard Time).

In case of questions, get in touch with the two workshops co-chairs Sylwia Kopczyńska (sylwia.kopczynska@cs.put.poznan.pl) and Julian Frattini (julian.frattini@chalmers.se).

The format of your paper must strictly adhere to the IEEEtran Proceedings Format. LaTeX users: please use the LaTeX class file IEEEtran v1.8 and the following configuration (without option ‘compsoc’ or ‘compsocconf’): \documentclass[conference]{IEEEtran}

Word users: please use this Word template. See the official IEEE Templates page for more information.

Please make sure that your submission:

• does not exceed the respective page limit specified in the track call
• is in PDF format,
• is in letter page size,
• does not have page numbers,
• has all fonts embedded in the PDF file,
• uses only scalable font types (like Type 1, TrueType) — bit-mapped font types (like Type 3) are not acceptable,
• has all figures embedded in vector graphics (if not possible, use a high-resolution bitmap format of at least 300 dpi; do not use JPG, but a lossless format like PNG or GIF),
• has all text in figures and tables large enough and readable when printed,
• has a caption for every figure or table,
• has the title and all headings properly capitalized
• has no orphans and widows (cf. Section Help), and
• does not use footnote references in the abstract.