Call for Papers — BehavXR'26 @ ISMAR 2026

Overview

XR technologies are increasingly applied to behavioral health, spanning substance use disorders, addiction prevention, health behavior change, and self-regulatory wellbeing. Three research communities are advancing this work in parallel: clinical and behavioral scientists, XR and HCI researchers, and participatory designers. BehavXR'26 brings these communities together for the first time at ISMAR, with a methodology-forward agenda aimed at producing shared standards and design frameworks.

A central deliverable is a community-driven Minimum Reporting Checklist for behavioral health XR research, to support reproducibility and clinical translation across the field.

Topics of Interest

Submissions are welcome across the three pillars. Topics include but are not limited to:

Pillar 1 — Health Sensing

Bio-sensing for behavioral health assessment and biomarker development
Cue reactivity paradigms and physiological sensing for substance use disorders in XR
Signal selection, synchronization, multimodal fusion, and reporting standards
Reporting standards and reproducibility in psychophysiological XR research
Eye tracking as a measure of attentional bias in behavioral health
Wearable sensor integration for clinical and youth populations

Pillar 2 — Behavior Change

Game-based and avatar-based XR interventions for health behavior change
Future-self continuity, embodied self-dialogue, and perspective-taking in XR
Avatar-based XR for decision making and intrapersonal processes
XR for addiction prevention, cessation, relapse prevention, and recovery
Episodic future thinking and temporal self-continuity in XR

Pillar 3 — Responsible Design

Co-design and participatory design with youth, clinical, and underserved populations
Ethical frameworks for physiological data collection and biometric data governance
Ecological validity of XR stimuli for behavioral health contexts
Multi-stakeholder design pipelines integrating expert and lived-experience input
Clinical translation: from laboratory paradigm to deployable tool

Submission Types

Full Research Papers (Archival)

4 to 6 pages, IEEE VGTC format. Original empirical or system contributions. Accepted papers will be published in the ISMAR 2026 adjunct proceedings via IEEE Xplore.

Work-in-Progress / Position Papers (Non-Archival)

2 to 4 pages, IEEE VGTC format. Early-stage work, pilot studies, design frameworks, or critical perspectives. Presented at the workshop but not published in the proceedings.

All submissions will be peer-reviewed by the program committee. At least one author per accepted paper must register for the conference.

Submit Your Paper

Submissions are open via Microsoft CMT.

Submit via CMT →

The Microsoft CMT service was used for managing the peer-reviewing process for this conference. This service was provided for free by Microsoft and they bore all expenses, including costs for Azure cloud services as well as for software development and support.

Key Dates

Milestone	Date
Submission deadline	12 July 2026 (extended)
Notification of acceptance	22 July 2026
Camera-ready deadline	31 July 2026
Workshop date	October 6, 2026 — Bari, Italy

All deadlines are 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth).