CHiME-10 Call for Challenges

CHiME is a challenge series whose purpose is to advance scientific research in the field of distant-microphone conversational speech processing. Since CHiME 7, each edition of the CHiME Challenge has featured independent tasks organised by teams who work within a schedule defined by the CHiME Steering Group. Teams are responsible for managing the tasks, i.e., providing data and instructions, scoring submissions and results, etc. Once the proposal is conditionally accepted, the CHiME Steering Group supports teams in developing their tasks by helping with design, scheduling, webpage/platform, and organising a CHiME workshop, where the tasks will be presented through regular consultations.

The CHiME Steering group is now inviting task proposals for the CHiME-10 Challenge. Proposed tasks will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

  • Relevance – aligned with CHiME’s goals of advancing multi-speaker conversational processing using multichannel and multimodal input, while also addressing emerging AI and technological challenges. We also encourage submissions that extend or build upon previous CHiME Challenge scenarios, as this will help monitor progress and advances in these areas over time.
  • Methodology – i.e., likelihood to lead to robust and novel scientific findings
  • Accessibility – i.e., how easy is it for teams to engage with
  • Feasibility – likelihood to complete on schedule, risk management
  • Reproducibility – e.g., openness and long-term use of data, baseline
  • Diversity – amongst organisers and expected participants, e.g., academia vs industry, geography, gender, etc.

We wish to foster a collaborative proposal process that minimises overlap between proposals. To this end, if you are considering proposing a task, please sign up for the CHiME mailing list and feel free to discuss your plans. Or if you wish information to be shared more privately, i.e., amongst other bidders only, then you may share details or initial plans with the CHiME Steering group (chimechallenge@gmail.com), who will then share with others whose plans may overlap.

Proposal

Task bidders should submit a task proposal for review by the Steering Committee. The proposal should be a maximum of two pages (PDF format preferred), including the following information:

  • Task name
  • Coordinators and their roles
  • Keywords (e.g., enhancement, diarization, speaker recognition, etc.)
  • Definition (one sentence)
  • Short description (incl. research question the task is tackling)
  • Dataset description: development, evaluation (short description, including the license and how to access, how much data is already available and prepared, how long it would take to prepare the rest, mention if you allow external data/transfer learning or not)
  • Evaluation method/metric
  • Baseline system (brief description, planned method if you do not have one from a previous challenge, current readiness, including an expected readiness date)
  • Schedule for the challenge preparation, including the expected timeline for the data collection and annotation of the training, development, and test sets, baseline preparation and testing, etc.
  • List of participants who are likely to participate
  • Contact person for main communication (provide her/his email and website)

Pitching Session

We will be running an optional “proposal pitching” session at the HSCMA&CHiME 2026 workshop in Barcelona on 4th May. This will be an opportunity for teams developing a submission to receive feedback from members of the CHiME community. If you are interested in presenting at this discussion session, please contact us by 20th April to discuss.

Submission

The proposal should be sent to the CHiME Steering group (chimechallenge@gmail.com) by 28th May. The Steering Group will review the proposals and provide feedback by 11th June. In case task amendments are requested, the task acceptance decision will be finalized by 2nd July.

If you want any advice on preparing your proposal, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Important dates (TBC)

4 May 2026 Discussion session at HSCMA&CHiME 2026 to refine ideas and gather support
28 May 2026 Submission of task proposals
11 Jun 2026 Feedback from Steering Group
25 Jun 2026 Resubmission of conditionally accepted proposals
2 Jul 2026 Notification of acceptance
Jul-Feb Challenge preparation (Data collection, baseline, and rules preparation, etc.)
4 Feb 2027 Challenge opening
9 Sep 2027 Challenge submission deadline (date and details TBC)
6 Dec 2027 Workshop (date and details TBC)
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