9th Workshop on Visualization for AI Explainability

VISxAI 2026, the 9th Workshop on Visualization for AI Explainability, takes place in October 2026 in Boston as part of IEEE VIS, the premier annual gathering of the data-visualization research community. As AI models grow more complex, the need to understand their inner workings has sharpened, and this workshop positions visualization as a powerful way to meet it. Its organisers come from Google DeepMind, MIT, Harvard and Apple, with a steering committee spanning Carnegie Mellon, the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and the ETH AI Center.

What sets VISxAI apart is its distinctive call for submissions: rather than conventional papers alone, it solicits "explainables" and "explorables" — interactive, blog-style posts and notebook-format pieces that explain how AI techniques actually work through visual narrative — alongside more traditional position papers. Its hall of fame reflects the calibre on show, featuring widely shared pieces such as the Transformer Explainer, the Illustrated AlphaFold and Google PAIR explorables on what language models learn. Key 2026 dates include an August submission deadline and an October camera-ready, with the workshop itself co-located at IEEE VIS. For researchers, designers and educators working at the meeting point of visualization and machine learning, it is a uniquely creative venue for making the obfuscated complexity of AI systems legible and explorable to a broad audience.