CfP: Music Encoding Conference (26.–29.5.2026, Tokyo University of Science) Deadline: 28.11.2025
We are pleased to announce our call for papers, posters, panels, and workshops for the Music Encoding Conference 2026.
The Music Encoding Conference brings together members from music encoding, analysis, performance, and research communities, including musicologists, theorists, librarians, technologists, music scholars, teachers, and students, providing an opportunity for all participants to learn from and engage with each other.
This year, we will host lectures, panels, posters, and workshops and tutorials, but also a showcase where developers can demonstrate software tools and platforms.
The conference will be held 26–29 May 2026 at the Tokyo University of Science on behalf of the Music Encoding Initiative community.
Important dates and information
Conference date: 26–29 May, 2026
Location: Morito Memorial Hall, Tokyo University of Science, Tokyo, Japan
Deadline for proposals: Friday 28 November 2025 (Anywhere on Earth)
Notification of acceptance: Monday 26 January 2026
Registration deadline for authors: 2 April 2026
Last changes to abstracts for publication: 24 April 2026
For further questions, please e-mail conference2026[at]music-encoding[dot]org
Background
The Music Encoding Conference provides a forum where researchers and practitioners from varied fields can meet and share new research built on digital music editions and, especially, research into music encoding itself. The Conference celebrates a multidisciplinary program, combining the latest advances from established music encodings, novel technical proposals and encoding extensions, and the presentation and evaluation of new practical applications of music encoding (e.g. in academic study, libraries, editions, pedagogy).
When using and manipulating music in the digital domain, the properties and behaviours of its encoding are of fundamental importance. This applies equally for musicological study, music theory, production of digital editions, composition, performance, teaching and learning, cataloguing, symbolic music information retrieval and recommendation, or more general electronic presentation of musical material and associated narratives. It also applies for a wide range of musics, including those that are not conventionally notated at all. The study of music encoding and its applications is therefore a critical foundation for the use of music information by scholars, librarians, publishers, and the wider music industry.
We welcome contributions from all those working on music encoding, but also those whose research builds on digital music resources or corpora. Newcomers are encouraged to submit to the main program, demonstrating with articulations of the potential for music encoding in their work, and highlighting strengths and weaknesses of existing approaches within this context. We always seek to broaden the scope of musical repertories considered, and to provide a welcoming, inclusive community for all who are interested in this work. The Music Encoding Conference is supported and organised by the Music Encoding Initiative, which will hold its annual community meeting on Friday, 6 June.
The main academic conference is preceded by pre-conference workshops and tutorials, which provide an opportunity to engage with the tools and good practices developed within the community, and this will be further reinforced by a showcase during the conference, where these tools can also be demonstrated.
Following a formal program, unconference sessions will be held on 29th May 2026, designed to foster collaboration in the community through the meeting of Interest Groups, and open participation in discussions on hot topics that emerge during the conference. Spaces for these meetings have been generously provided by the hosting institution. As part of the conference, we would like to extend an invitation to attendees who may wish to organize additional meetings (e.g. project meetings) or other collaborative sessions in conjunction with the event. Availability of space for meetings during or immediately before or after the conference can be checked upon request. Please get in touch with conference organizers if you need to reserve these spaces.
Topics
The conference welcomes contributions from all those who are developing or using music encodings in their work and research.
Topics around music encoding include, but are not limited to:
concepts, models and structures for music representation and encoding
music encoding standardisation and interoperability
methodologies for encoding, music editing, description and analysis
computational analysis of encoded music
rendering symbolic music data in audio and graphical forms
relationships between multimodal music forms (e.g. symbolic music data, encoded text, facsimile images, audio and video)
capture, interchange, and re-purposing of musical data and metadata
ontologies, authority files, and linked data in music encoding and description
(symbolic) music information retrieval using music encoding
evaluation of music encodings
music encoding for non-European and/or un-notated musics
Topics concerned with use of music encoding might situate them in:
music theory and analysis
digital musicology and, more broadly, digital humanities
digital editions
music digital libraries
bibliographies and bibliographic studies
catalogues and collection management
composition
performance
teaching and learning
search and browsing
multimedia music presentation, exploration, and exhibition
machine learning approaches.
Submissions
The Program Committee for the Music Encoding Conference 2026 will accept proposals for papers, posters, panels, showcase demonstrations and workshops in the form of extended abstracts. All submissions will be double-blind peer-reviewed by multiple members of the committee before a decision is made on acceptance. After the review process, authors of accepted submissions will have the opportunity to make non-substantive revisions before the conference, to address minor corrections or clarifications suggested during the review process.
Please also refer to our statement on the use of generative AI in submissions.
Accepted abstracts will be published as part of the conference program and a Book of Abstracts after the conference.
Authors are invited to upload their anonymized submissions for review to our Conftool website: https://www.conftool.net/mec2026/
The deadline for all submissions is 28 November 2025 (see IMPORTANT DATES above). When you upload into ConfTool, you will be asked for Title, Author information and the PDF of your submission. In addition, you will need to supply a short summary abstract and up to five keywords – these will be used for review assignment, but may also appear on the conference programme and website. Since review will be anonymous, please ensure that all identifying information is removed from your PDF before submission.
Please use our template at https://tinyurl.com/MEC2026-Template for your PDF proposals. Word counts apply to the text of the proposal, excluding titles, keywords and references.