ACM RecSys 2026: Call for Student Volunteers
The call for student volunteers at RecSys 2026 is out, and if you are even remotely considering an academic or research career, you should read it and apply. RecSys is where our field gathers in full force, and you learn as much from the conversations as from the papers. The conference will be in Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 28 to October 2, 2026, with an on-site orientation on September 27.
Volunteering is one of the smartest things you can do as a student because it places you inside the conference, not on the edges of it. You are not “networking” in the awkward sense. You are helping the event run, and that creates natural interactions with organizers, senior researchers, industry people, and other students who will become your peers. Being visible, reliable, and present goes a long way in academia, and volunteering makes that easy.
The duties are practical and on-site: registration, AV support, posters and demos, guiding attendees, and helping with off-site events. In return, volunteers get free registration, access to social events, and typically still attend most sessions. Work is capped at 20 hours. This is a very good trade if you want a serious immersion into how research communities actually function.
You do not need an accepted paper to apply, though it can help in selection. Eligibility includes undergraduate, master’s, and PhD students during 2026–2027, and also recent PhD graduates (defended during 2025–2026). The program explicitly welcomes international and geographically diverse applicants, and they are looking for enthusiasm and reliability, not prior volunteer experience.
There are two deadlines: early submission May 5, 2026 (notification May 15), and late submission July 12, 2026 (notification July 22). Aim for the early round. It gives you time to plan travel and funding. Yes, you are expected to cover travel and lodging, and travel grant information will be posted later, but do not self-reject. Apply, and in parallel talk to your advisor and department about support. If you want to learn how academia really works, there are few experiences with a better return than being a student volunteer at RecSys.
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About The Author
Joeran Beel
I am the founder of Recommender-Systems.com and head of the Intelligent Systems Group (ISG) at the University of Siegen, Germany https://isg.beel.org. We conduct research in recommender-systems (RecSys), personalization and information retrieval (IR) as well as on automated machine learning (AutoML), meta-learning and algorithm selection. Domains we are particularly interested in include smart places, eHealth, manufacturing (industry 4.0), mobility, visual computing, and digital libraries. We founded or maintain, among others, LensKit-Auto, Darwin & Goliath, Mr. DLib, and Docear, each with thousand of users; we contributed to TensorFlow, JabRef and others; and we developed the first prototypes of automated recommender systems (AutoSurprise and Auto-CaseRec) and Federated Meta Learning (FMLearn Server and Client).