We invite proposals for workshops and tutorials for the Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) 2026. All workshops and tutorials will be exclusively half-day events. Workshops and tutorials will be held in-person at the JW Marriott Austin in Austin, Texas, USA, on November 9th, 2026, the day before the main conference (November 10–12, 2026).
This year, we are making a deliberate shift: CoRL workshops should be workshops again, instead of mini-conferences. Over the past years, workshops have increasingly become venues for back-to-back talks with limited audience engagement. We want to return to the original spirit of workshopping: organizers, speakers, contributors, and the audience coming together to collaboratively discuss and tackle open problems of the community. We strongly encourage proposals that center on interactive, problem-oriented formats where participants actively work together toward addressing specific open challenges in robot learning.
We welcome workshop proposals that:
Identify and articulate specific open challenges. Proposals should explicitly state which problems or research challenges the workshop aims to address. Broad, survey-style themes (e.g., “robot manipulation”) are discouraged in favor of focused, challenge-driven topics.
Feature a small, committed set of expert speakers (no more than 4). Since all workshops are half-day events, we encourage keeping the speaker list short and focused. Each speaker's expertise should be clearly motivated in the proposal: why is this person essential to addressing the stated challenges?
Promote diversity across all dimensions. We strongly encourage and will favor proposals with diverse speaker pools to the extent that the limited number of speakers allows. This includes diversity in career stage (Ph.D. students and postdocs alongside senior researchers), gender, race and ethnicity, geographic location, institution, and professional background (industry, government, academia).
Prioritize interaction and collaboration over passive consumption. We encourage innovative formats that maximize audience participation, e.g., structured problem-solving sessions, collaborative brainstorming, live demos, fishbowl discussions, breakout groups, or other creative formats. The goal is for every attendee to leave having actively contributed, not just listened.
Accept contributed workshop papers. We strongly encourage workshops to solicit paper submissions to broaden participation. However, we discourage accepting papers that have already been published at or accepted to the main CoRL 2026 conference. Further restrictions can be imposed by the organizers themselves. Workshops should be a space for new, preliminary, and in-progress ideas.
We also welcome proposals for half-day tutorials. Tutorials differ from workshops in their focus and format:
Teaching-oriented. Tutorials should aim to bring researchers (especially newcomers) up to speed on a specific method, tool, library, or research area. All talks should be instructional in nature.
No contributed papers required. Unlike workshops, tutorials do not need to solicit paper submissions.
More speakers are acceptable. Since tutorials are structured around teaching rather than collaborative problem-solving, a larger number of presenters covering different aspects of a topic is acceptable.
Hands-on elements are encouraged. Interactive coding sessions, live demos, and guided exercises are highly valued.
Speaker commitment limit: Each invited speaker may present at a maximum of 2 workshop(s) or tutorial(s). This policy exists to promote diversity of voices across the workshop program. Workshop organizers must communicate this policy to all invited speakers at the time of invitation and verify compliance. Suggested language for communicating with speakers:
"CoRL 2026 limits invited speakers to appearing at no more than 2 workshop(s) / tutorial(s). If you are considering or have already committed to other events, please let us know so we can coordinate accordingly."
Full-session attendance is strongly encouraged. We strongly encourage, and will favor, workshops where invited speakers commit to attending the entire workshop session, not only their own talk. This helps maintain a cohesive audience throughout the event and enables the collaborative atmosphere we are aiming for. We ask organizers to communicate this expectation to speakers and indicate in their proposal how they plan to encourage sustained attendance.
To encourage workshops that produce lasting value beyond the event itself, CoRL 2026 expects accepted workshops to submit a workshop artifact after the conclusion of the conference. For example, a whitepaper summarizing open challenges and proposed directions, a community report on the state of a subfield, or a collaboratively written position paper. The format is specified in the artifact requirements. Details on the publication venue and process will be shared with accepted workshops.
Proposals should be concise (2–3 pages recommended, 5 pages maximum) and must include:
Workshop or tutorial title
Type of event (half-day workshop or half-day tutorial)
Organizers' names, affiliations, and contact information
Tentative website URL
A clear statement of the specific challenges or research questions the event will address
A summary of the proposed format and how it encourages active participation
List of invited speakers and panelists (confirmed and tentative), with a brief justification of how each speaker's expertise contributes to the workshop's stated challenges
Plans for soliciting and selecting contributed papers (workshops) or structuring instructional content (tutorials)
Plans for promoting diversity among speakers and participants
Confirmation that at least one organizer will attend CoRL 2026 in person
Acknowledgment that organizers will attend the CoRL 2026 workshop organizers meeting
Any special requirements or resources
Please use the LaTeX template for the proposal and submit the pdf via the application form.
Workshop proposals will be reviewed by the workshop chairs. In evaluating proposals, we will consider:
Challenge focus: Does the proposal clearly identify specific open problems? Does it go beyond surveying a field?
Interactivity and format: Does the proposed format foster genuine collaboration and audience participation, or does it default to a sequence of talks?
Speaker selection and diversity: Is the speaker pool diverse? Is each speaker's relevance to the workshop's challenges clearly motivated?
Speaker commitment: Do speakers commit to attending the full session?
Timeliness and uniqueness: Is the topic timely? Does the workshop differentiate itself from recent events at other conferences?
Feasibility: Have the organizers thought through logistics to make the event succeed?
If multiple high-quality proposals cover overlapping themes, proposers may be asked to merge their workshops/tutorials to create a stronger, more focused event. However, given that we will only have half-day events, this request will be made very rarely. We still encourage including a statement of willingness to collaborate on potential mergers.
Note: The schedule below is preliminary and subject to change. Final times will be communicated to accepted workshop organizers.
For any inquiries, please contact the CoRL 2026 Workshop Chairs (please email both):
Danfei Xu [ danfei@gatech.edu ]
Rudolf Lioutikov [ lioutikov@kit.edu ]