The fortieth edition of NeurIPS, the leading machine learning conference, opens on 6 December 2026 in Sydney. This year it is held across three official sites: Sydney from 6 to 12 December, and two satellites in Paris and Atlanta from 9 to 13 December. For French research, the Paris component, hosted at the Palais des Congrès and Sorbonne Université, matters particularly: an accepted paper can be presented there without travelling all the way to Australia.
Why NeurIPS is splitting across three cities
The conference has grown faster than convention centres. According to the review published by its programme chairs on the official blog in September 2025, the main track received 21,575 valid submissions last year and accepted 5,290 of them, an acceptance rate of 24.52%; in 2020, the conference had 9,467. Bringing all the authors together in a single venue is becoming difficult, not to mention the cost and the visas for a trip to Australia.
The April 2026 newsletter explains that Paris and Atlanta are becoming official satellites after pilot experiments carried out in 2025, including one in Mexico City. Each hosts invited talks, oral presentations and poster sessions of papers accepted at NeurIPS 2026, as well as workshops. Sydney remains the main site: the six invited talks announced on the website are scheduled there, and its own workshops take place on 11 and 12 December.
The programme announced in Paris
According to the hotels page of the official website, the main Paris conference takes place from 9 to 11 December at the Palais des Congrès, Porte Maillot. The workshops on 12 and 13 December are split between the same venue and Sorbonne Université’s Jussieu campus. The Paris organising committee comprises Olivier Cappé, Laetitia Chapel, Rémi Flamary, Pierre Marion, Linus Bleistein and Edwige Cyffers.
The workshop figures give an idea of Paris’s weight. The NeurIPS blog reported in August that it had received 477 proposals, 454 of them valid, and selected 102: 48 in Sydney, 28 in Paris and 26 in Atlanta. Paris even has the highest acceptance rate, 25.4%, against 21.5% for Sydney, which the organisers attribute to the number of applications and rooms specific to each site.
Several community events are attached to the Paris week: GlobalSouthAI on 9 December, Muslims in ML, Queer in AI and Women in ML on the 10th, and New in ML on the 11th, in Paris only. On the eve of the opening, 8 December, the European network ELLIS is holding an “UnConference” at the Palais des Congrès, presented as the kick-off of the Paris satellite.
The confirmed speakers in Sydney
Six invited speakers are listed on the website, all scheduled in Sydney. They include Tie-Yan Liu, founding president of the Zhongguancun Academy in Beijing, who will talk about industrial learning loops; Satinder Singh, of Google DeepMind and the University of Michigan; Cheng Soon Ong, science director at Australia’s CSIRO; the philosopher Shannon Vallor, of the University of Edinburgh, on AI and the dispossession of knowledge; José Hernández-Orallo, of Cambridge, on the future of evaluating AI systems; and Barbara Engelhardt, of the Gladstone Institutes and Stanford.
The general chairs are Hsuan-Tien Lin, of National Taiwan University, and Razvan Pascanu, of Google DeepMind and Mila. The August newsletter claims the largest organising committee in the conference’s history.
Registering: fees, deadlines and limits
Registration for Paris goes through a separate website, neurips-europe.cc, run by the agency Dakini PCO. At the standard rate, in force since 31 October, the full pass costs €480 for a student, €655 for an academic and €950 for an industry participant, taxes included. Reduced packages exist for the conference only or the workshops only. Payment is by card only, and cancellations are no longer refunded after 4 November.
The main limit is the number of places. The Paris website states that registrations for non-presenting authors are full and that the waiting list is closed. For Sydney and Atlanta, the home page specifies that the remaining places were reopened to the general public after authors and the waiting list had been processed. Free childcare is offered to registered participants, subject to availability.
One uncertainty remains: the official pages consulted on 12 November give neither the detailed session-by-session programme for Paris nor the number of papers accepted in 2026. The 2025 figures are therefore the only benchmark.
Frequently asked questions
What are the exact dates of NeurIPS 2026?
Sydney hosts the conference from 6 to 12 December 2026. The Paris satellite runs from 9 to 13 December, with workshops on the 12th and 13th. Atlanta also ends its session on 13 December.
Can you attend NeurIPS Paris without presenting a paper?
In principle yes, but the Paris registration website states that places for non-presenting authors are sold out and that the waiting list is closed. Keep an eye on the neurips-europe.cc website for any reopening.
Where is the Paris satellite held?
The main conference takes place at the Palais des Congrès de Paris, Porte Maillot. The workshops are shared between this venue and Sorbonne Université’s Jussieu campus, in the fifth arrondissement.
NeurIPS is listed in 24h00’s tech events calendar, alongside the other major AI events. To cover one of these events with the newsroom, the procedure is described on our press accreditation page.
Sources
- NeurIPS 2026 — conference home (Sydney, Atlanta, Paris) — NeurIPS, 2026-11-12
- NeurIPS 2026 — Hotels (lieux de Paris) — NeurIPS, 2026-11-12
- NeurIPS 2026 — Invited Speakers — NeurIPS, 2026-11-12
- NeurIPS Paris 2026 — inscription officielle — NeurIPS Paris (Dakini PCO), 2026-11-12
- NeurIPS Newsletter – April 2026 — Blog NeurIPS, 2026-04-22
- Announcing the NeurIPS 2026 Workshops — Blog NeurIPS, 2026-08-10
- NeurIPS Newsletter – August 2026 — Blog NeurIPS, 2026-09-05
- Announcing the NeurIPS 2026 Affinity Events — Blog NeurIPS, 2026-09-25
- ELLIS UnConference 2026 — ELLIS, 2026-11-12
- Reflections on the 2025 Review Process from the Program Committee Chairs — Blog NeurIPS, 2025-09-30