The Second Arabic NLP School

Co-located with EACL 2026
Rabat, Morocco
March 24, 2026

Organized by SIGARAB

Important Note to all Participants!

The following is the content of an email sent to all accepted participants. Please check your email spam if you did not received.

We are thrilled to welcome you to the Arabic NLP School 2026, taking place on March 24, 2026 in Rabat, Morocco, as part of EACL 2026.

You are joining 120 young researchers and 20 mentors from across the world for an intensive, hands-on experience designed to take you through the full research lifecycle from idea conception all the way to conference-ready presentations. This is not a passive workshop or typical NLP school; it is a collaborative research sprint, and your active participation is what will make it memorable and useful.

(1) Your Team and Mentor Assignment

The school is organized into four thematic research clusters: (1) Dialect Modeling & Cross-Variety NLP, (2) Arabic Data Resources & Benchmarking, (3) Domain-Specific Arabic NLP (e.g., education, finance, etc.), and (4) Social Good and Arabic NLP. Each cluster consists of 4 teams (16 teams total). Each team has 7-8 students, and is assigned a primary mentor and a secondary mentor.

(2) URGENT RESPONSE: Due by Tuesday March 3, 2026 Any Time on Earth

Join the School Slack channel (Link Sent by Email). This is of utmost importance as all communication will happen through Slack!
You will be assigned to your specific team channel on Slack after you register.

(3) Homework Due by Tuesday March 17, 2026 Any Time on Earth

Arrange to have at least one online meeting with the other team members. Communicate with them on slack in your respective team channel.
In the meeting(s) you should agree as a team on a Team Name, Preliminary Project Title and Abstract, and identify relevant related work.
You will need as a single team to fill this form by March 17, 2026: Link Sent by Email.

About the School

The Second Arabic NLP School 2026 is a one-day event co-located with EACL 2026 in Rabat, Morocco, on Tuesday, March 24, 2026. The first edition of the Arabic NLP School (Arabic NLP Winter School 2025) was co-located with COLING 2025 in Abu Dhabi, UAE (January 18-19, 2025). 100 people participated in the First Arabic NLP Winter School.

The 2026 edition of the School introduces a redesigned, highly practical format aimed at developing end-to-end research skills in NLP. The School will guide participants through the full research lifecycle: from conceiving an idea, formulating research questions, conducting responsible and thorough related-work reviews, designing meaningful experiments, and curating/annotating data, all the way to preparing submissions, producing camera-ready papers, and effectively presenting research at conferences. While these skills are central to any NLP research effort, the School focuses specifically on Arabic language technologies, Arab cultures, and the unique needs of emerging researchers from the Arab world.

The program is an intensive, hands-on experience combining expert panels, ethics-focused discussions, and collaborative teamwork to develop a complete, well-founded research proposal in Arabic NLP. The program seeks to empower the next generation of scholars and practitioners who will shape the future of Arabic NLP.

We anticipate a wide range of participants, including researchers, undergraduate and graduate students, PhD candidates, and industry and government practitioners with an interest in Arabic NLP.

Arabic NLP School 2026 is an application-based program offered free of charge to applicants who are accepted (thanks to our great ✨sponsors✨!). Application details are provided below.

Participation and Structure

Capacity: The school will host 120 in-person student participants. Attendance is not hybrid; all participants must be physically present.
Selection: Participants will be chosen through an application process. Mentors, drawn from respected members of the Arabic NLP community, will take part in reviewing applications.
Team-Based Research: Attendees will be organized into 16 teams of 6-8, each guided by a dedicated primary mentor and secondary mentor.
Workspace: Round-table seating will accommodate teams of nine (mentor + eight team members) to encourage active collaboration and co-creation.

The goal of the team structure is to ensure that every participant gains hands-on experience in collaborative research planning and communication.

Outcomes and Impact

Build deep, practical research skills among emerging scholars in Arabic NLP
Cultivate long-term mentorship relationships and professional networks
Foster collaborative projects rooted in regional linguistic and cultural needs
Equip participants with the tools to become future leaders and contributors to SIGARAB and the broader NLP field

The school is designed to be an intensive, community-driven experience that accelerates participants’ readiness to engage in high-impact Arabic NLP research.

Program Schedule (March 24, 2026)

8:00-9:00 — Registration

9:00–9:30 — Welcome, agenda, sponsor acknowledgment (Nizar Habash)

9:30–10:30 — Panel: Research from A to Z (Houda Bouamor, Walid Magdy, Mahmoud El-Haj, Bashar Alhafni, Moderator: Wajdi Zaghouani)
A comprehensive discussion on the full research pipeline and best practices.
Stories of failures, resilience, efficiency strategies, and pitfalls to avoid

10:30–11:00 — Coffee Break: Teams and Mentors Socialize

11:00-11:30 — Invited Talk: Arabic LLM Benchmarking (Kareem Darwish)
Considerations for responsible research, especially in the context of Arabic NLP.

11:30–1:00 — Teamwork Session: Writing a Research Proposal
Teams complete a structured 4-page research proposal. The template focuses on research questions, related work, novelty, and feasibility.

1:00–2:00 — Lunch (Working Lunch)

2:00–3:30 — Proposal Finalization & Slide Preparation
Teams finalize proposals, exchange feedback with other teams, and prepare three presentation slides: title, research question, and plan.

3:30–4:00 — Reviewing
Each team will be judged by three reviewers (three mentors not associated with the team). 10 min per review.

4:00–4:30 — Coffee Break: Organizers identify best 6 teams to present.

4:30–5:00 — Team Presentations
Each of the 6 top teams delivers a 5-minute presentation of their proposed research (1 representative, others on stage). Online voting by all school participants.

5:00–5:30 — Awards and Closing Session
The best teams are acknowledged. Sponsors, Mentors, and Participants are thanked.

Team Clusters

The School’s 16 groups will be organized in four clusters:

(1) Dialect Modeling & Cross-Variety NLP

This cluster focuses on modeling Arabic varieties (dialects, standard, and classical) and handling variation across regions, registers, and writing styles. It addresses code-switching, spelling variation, and transfer between Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and dialects.

Dialect identification systems
Code-switching modeling (Arabic–French/English)
Morphology-aware language modeling
Dialect normalization systems

(2) Arabic Data Resources & Benchmarking

This cluster focuses on building, annotating, documenting, and evaluating Arabic datasets. It strengthens research foundations through improved benchmarks, greater reproducibility, and better experimental design.

Corpus construction and dataset documentation
Annotation guidelines and inter-annotator agreement studies
Arabic NLP benchmark creation
Reproducibility and model comparison studies

(3) Domain-Specific Arabic NLP

This cluster develops Arabic NLP systems tailored to specific domains such as healthcare, law, education, media, or multimodal applications, where terminology and context require specialized modeling.

Healthcare or clinical text modeling
Legal and policy document analysis
Educational Arabic NLP
Arabic Financial NLP

(4) Social Good and Arabic NLP

This cluster examines ethical AI, fairness, cultural representation, and societal impact in Arabic NLP to ensure responsible and inclusive deployment of language technologies.

Bias and fairness evaluation in Arabic LLMs
Cultural representation analysis
Ethical data collection frameworks
Hallucination and misinformation detection
NLP tools for social good and public services

Organizers

Nizar Habash, CAMeL Lab, New York University Abu Dhabi
Houda Bouamor, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar

Mentors

The School is supported by a team of 20 mentors.

🌟 Haithem Afli

🌟 Bashar Alhafni

🌟 Si Lhoussain Aouragh

🌟 Ehsan Asgari

🌟 Lamia Benhiba

🌟 Houda Bouamor

🌟 Kawtar Younsi Dahbi

🌟 Kareem Darwish

🌟 Mo El-Haj

🌟 Tamer Elsayed

🌟 Nizar Habash

🌟 Hakim Hafidi

🌟 Go Inoue

🌟 Salam Khalifa

🌟 Walid Magdy

🌟 Youness Moukafih

🌟 Khalil Mrini

🌟 Hamdy Mubarak

🌟 Driss Namly

🌟 Wajdi Zaghouani

Application Process

🚀🚀🚀 The application form for The Arabic NLP School is provided 🌟🌟🌟here🌟🌟🌟.
Important Dates
- Application Deadline: January 31, 2026
- Acceptance Notification: February 9, 2026
- Arabic NLP School: March 24, 2026.
We reiceived over 300 applications! We selected 120 students to be part of the Arabic NLP School.

Platinum Sponsors

Gold Sponsor

Bronze Sponsor

Supporting Organizations

Google Sites

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