WELCOME TO IJCAI 2021!

Dear IJCAI Community,

It is clear to us that we will not be able to hold IJCAI-PRICAI 2020 in Yokohama this July as originally scheduled. We are very sorry to have to make this decision, but there is simply no possibility of holding a large in-person gathering in July given the continued impact of the pandemic on events around the world.

Nevertheless, the conference will still be held at a later date, most likely during January 2021. We have been working on two alternative forms for the rescheduled conference.

The first possibility is to hold an in-person conference. Based on venue availability, the most likely scenario for this event would be in Kyoto from January 5-10, 2021. We expect that such an event would have lower physical participation than originally planned, since global travel may still be limited. We would therefore aim to provide options for remote participation, e.g., allowing authors to present remotely and more opportunities for remote attendees.

The second possibility is to move the conference entirely online, in a high-quality virtual event. To give us sufficient time to determine if an in-person event is still feasible, we would hold the virtual event in January 2021 (exact dates and duration to be determined).

Many of our community members have asked that we make every effort to have an in-person conference, and we are continuing to do so. We are cautiously optimistic about the feasibility of the in-person option.

We would also like to point out that we view the dissemination of authors’ new research results to be the primary focus of the IJCAI conference. Hence, the publication of the proceedings will proceed at the normal schedule, and the proceedings will be made publicly available by July of this year. We remind you that all IJCAI proceedings, including the upcoming 2020 proceedings, are open access and available online at https://www.ijcai.org/

Best regards, and stay safe,

Marie desJardins, Conference Chair
Christian Bessiere, Program Chair
Takayuki Ito, Local Arrangements Chair
Hideyuki Nakashima, PRICAI Chair
Vesna Sabljakovic-Fritz, IJCAI Executive Secretary
Bernhard Nebel, IJCAI Secretary-Treasurer
Fahiem Bacchus, President, IJCAI Board of Trustees