KDD 2026¶

32nd ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining — International Convention Center Jeju (ICC Jeju), Jeju, South Korea, August 9–13, 2026.

Status: Scaffold — meeting ~3 months out (today is May 11, 2026). Cycle 2 main-track notifications are due May 16, 2026 (this week); BIOKDD submissions close May 14, 2026 with notification June 4, 2026. This is a light build, not full coverage — see "Scope" below.

Why this is in the vault¶

KDD is the premier general-purpose data-mining conference (~3,500 attendees in recent years), with an unusually strong applied research / industry track (ADS) alongside its academic Research Track. Unlike NeurIPS / ICML / ICLR — which are the deep-learning methods venues — KDD's center of gravity sits on structured-data ML, graph mining, recommender systems, time-series, EHR mining, clinical NLP, and large-scale productionized pipelines. That makes its cancer-relevant subset distinct from the ML venues: less foundation-model preprint-bait, more EHR-cohort / claims-data / multi-omics-pipeline / drug-repurposing graph work that lands closer to the clinic.

Three concrete reasons to keep a scoped presence:

EHR mining + clinical NLP pipeline. KDD historically hosts the largest non-AMIA cluster of EHR / claims / longitudinal-cohort papers in the ML world, including the recurring epiDAMIK workshop on data-driven public/population health. These pipelines feed AACR's outcomes-research and clinico-genomics axes.
Bioinformatics + multi-omics ML. BIOKDD 2026 is the workshop's 25th edition; the 2026 theme is "Digital Twins" — disease-trajectory simulation, cell-cell communication, microenvironmental interactions, post-treatment outcome prediction. This is the closest KDD analog to ICML's GenBio / FM4LS bio cluster, but with a tilt toward applied multi-omics rather than de novo design.
Healthcare agentic-AI + LLM-grounding. KDD 2026 has an unusually heavy agentic-AI workshop slate (RelSciFM, SciSoc Agents & LLMs, Enterprise AI Agents, AEGIS for evidence-grounded interventional systems, KDD Eval for agentic-AI trustworthiness). Many of these reliably adapt to clinical / oncology use within 6 months.

KDD 2026 introduces a new AI for Sciences track (inaugural year) that explicitly welcomes "health sciences, healthcare, bioinformatics, epidemiology, pharmaceuticals, systems biology, multiomics, neuroscience." This consolidates work that previously spread across Research and ADS tracks and is our primary main-track filter target.

Scope (what this vault covers — and what it does not)¶

In scope (light build):

The bio / health / drug-discovery / clinical-NLP / public-health workshops at KDD 2026 (see roster below).
AI for Sciences track papers in the biomedical / health subset.
Research Track + ADS Track papers matching a cancer / genomics / single-cell / spatial / drug-discovery / EHR / clinical-NLP / pathology / healthcare-graph keyword filter (anticipate a few dozen out of ~700 main-track papers across two cycles).
The agentic-AI / LLM-for-science subset of the main-track + agentic-AI workshops, regardless of explicit bio framing.

Out of scope:

General data-mining bulk: recommender systems, e-commerce, advertising (AdKDD), search/discovery (TSMO), urban computing (UrbComp), finance (MLF), talent computing (TMC), fraud / integrity work without a healthcare hook.
Tutorials and KDD Cup challenges outside the bio / health niches.
The full main proceedings (~700 papers across two cycles); bulk extraction is explicitly not planned.
Korea Day / Special Days programming unless content overlaps.

Anticipated bio / health-relevant workshops¶

The 2026 workshop roster is finalized (30 workshops total). The bio / health / clinical / agentic-AI-with-science-hook subset:

Workshop	Theme	Acronym	Notes
25th International Workshop on Data Mining in Bioinformatics	data mining for bioinformatics, biomedical informatics; 2026 theme "Digital Twins" — disease trajectories, cell-cell comm, treatment-response prediction	BIOKDD 2026	Submission May 14, notification Jun 4, 2026; IEEE/ACM TCBB special issue for full papers
Workshop on Data-driven Decision Making for Public and Population Health	epidemiology, public health, AI/data systems for population health; recurring since 2018	epiDAMIK 2026	Aug 9 or 10, 2026
Adaptation and Evidence-grounding of Generative Interventional Systems	evidence-grounded generative AI for interventional / clinical decision systems; UF College of Public Health & Health Professions affiliated	AEGIS 2026	First edition; clinical decision-support focus
Reliable Scientific Foundation Models: Design, Training, Grounding, Verification	trustworthy FMs for science — design, evaluation, grounding	RelSciFM 2026	Bio/chem subset only; skip generic FM theory
The Second Workshop on SciSoc Agents & LLMs: Agentic AI for Scientific and Societal Advances	LLM agents for scientific and societal applications	SciSoc LLM 2026	Science-agent subset only
KDD workshop on Evaluation and Trustworthiness of Agentic AI	agentic-AI evaluation, safety, trustworthiness	AgenticAI-Eval 2026	Healthcare-deployment subset
The International Workshop on AI for Cognitive and Mental Health Support	clinical AI for mental health, cognitive support	AI4Mental 2026	First edition; psycho-oncology adjacent
Responsible Multimodal Foundation Models for Knowledge Discovery	multimodal FMs, responsible / robust deployment	RespMultimodal 2026	Medical-imaging / clinical-multimodal subset
Enterprise AI Agents: From Prototypes to Production	productionizing agentic systems; relevant where pharma / biotech is in scope	EntAIAgents 2026	Pharma/biotech-deployment subset only

The seven core bio/health/agentic-with-science workshops above are the anchor; another ~3 (RelSciFM, RespMultimodal, EntAIAgents) get filtered partial coverage. The remaining ~20 workshops (advertising, finance, urban, fraud, recsys, time-series-generic, federated-generic) are out of scope.

What we have / will have to work with¶

Source	Coverage	Notes
Main proceedings	~700 accepted papers across Cycle 1 + Cycle 2	ACM Digital Library / KDD proceedings; OpenReview KDD.org/2026/Conference group hosts decision records. Cycle 1 notifications were Nov 23, 2025; Cycle 2 notifications due May 16, 2026.
AI for Sciences track	inaugural track	Biomedical / health applications consolidated here; cleanest filter target.
Workshop OpenReview / sites	one venue per workshop	BIOKDD, epiDAMIK, AEGIS, RelSciFM, SciSoc LLM, AgenticAI-Eval, AI4Mental, RespMultimodal each host their own site.
bioRxiv / medRxiv mirrors	most bio-relevant KDD papers have a preprint	Filter for "KDD 2026" mentions; especially for BIOKDD digital-twin contributions.
Twitter/Bluesky	real-time reactions	`#KDD2026`; useful for agentic-AI-for-science orals.
Recorded talks	YouTube + KDD virtual platform	KDD records ADS orals + most workshop keynotes; posts within ~2–4 weeks of meeting.
Cross-link with NeurIPS / ICML	author + tool overlap	KDD's August slot sits between ICML (July) and NeurIPS (December); the same agentic-AI / FM-bio authors often appear at all three.
Cross-link with AMIA / ML4H	EHR / clinical-NLP author overlap	KDD's EHR cluster heavily overlaps with AMIA Annual Symposium (Nov) and ML4H @ NeurIPS.

Organization¶

conferences/kdd-2026/
├── index.md             # this page
├── program-notes.md     # pre-meeting prep — dates, filter criteria, expected themes
└── tools/               # per-paper / per-tool entries, populated post-notification
    └── index.md         # template + scope-filter note

No digest/, no themes.md, no keynotes/. The light-build pattern mirrors NeurIPS 2026 / ICML 2026 / CVPR 2026: only tools/ gets populated, and only with the filtered subset.

What's different from full-conference vaults¶

Compared to ISMB 2026, RECOMB 2026, AACR 2026, ASCO 2026, or EuroBioC 2025 — which aim at near-complete program coverage — KDD 2026 is scope-limited by design:

No per-session digests, no per-day digests, no themes synthesis. The general-purpose data-mining bulk is irrelevant.
No keynote / plenary coverage unless the speaker is a known bio / clinical-AI author.
Tool entries are filtered down to a few dozen, not exhaustive. The filter is keyed on the AACR axes, not on KDD's own taxonomy.
Most KDD 2026 tool entries should explicitly cross-link to a NeurIPS 2026 / ICML 2026 / AMIA 2026 cousin paper — KDD's EHR-cluster overlaps AMIA, its bio-cluster overlaps NeurIPS LMRL / ICML FM4LS, and its agentic-AI cluster overlaps all three ML venues.

Key dates¶

Date	Event
Jul 24, 2025	Cycle 1 abstract deadline — past
Jul 31, 2025	Cycle 1 full-paper deadline — past
Oct 4–18, 2025	Cycle 1 rebuttal period — past
Nov 23, 2025	Cycle 1 notifications — past
Feb 1, 2026	Cycle 2 abstract deadline — past
Feb 8, 2026	Cycle 2 full-paper deadline — past
Apr 4–17, 2026	Cycle 2 rebuttal period — past
May 14, 2026	BIOKDD 2026 submission deadline (extended) — this week
May 16, 2026	Cycle 2 main-track notifications — this week
Jun 4, 2026	BIOKDD 2026 notification
Aug 9–13, 2026	KDD 2026 main meeting, Jeju, ICC Jeju
Aug 9 or 10, 2026	epiDAMIK 2026 (workshop day)

Sources¶

Next step¶

Now → mid-May 2026: monitor Cycle 2 main-track notifications (May 16) and BIOKDD notification (Jun 4). No bulk content extraction until accept lists drop.
Late May – Jul 2026: scaffold likely bio / health workshop pages; run the keyword filter against the Cycle 1 + Cycle 2 accepted list to identify the ~few-dozen bio-relevant papers; cross-check author lists against ICML 2026 (Jul 6–11) bio-workshop acceptances.
Aug 9–13, 2026 (during the meeting): opportunistic capture of social reactions, especially BIOKDD / epiDAMIK / AEGIS / RelSciFM orals and AI-for-Sciences track talks.
Post-meeting (mid-Aug 2026 onward): populate tools/ with the filtered subset; cross-link into AACR 2026 agentic-AI, virtual-cells, and outcomes-research axes, plus NeurIPS 2026 / ICML 2026 / AMIA 2026 cousins.