Overview

We are thrilled to host the Cross-Cultural Emotion Recognition from Body Movements Challenge at the 14th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII 2026). Building on our successful inaugural event, this second MMAC workshop moves from theoretical discussions to a hands-on challenge. 

Body movement is a highly expressive channel for emotion, conveying subtle nuances that facial expressions often miss. While affective computing is increasingly shifting toward 3D skeleton-based recognition, most research remains limited to basic emotions and simple actions. Current models often fail to capture real-world emotional expressions because:

• They miss complex feelings: They overlook social emotions like shame, pride, and jealousy.

• Context matters: Actions vary greatly depending on the scenario and are smoothly blended together rather than being rigid, simple movements.

• Culture plays a role: Physical expressions are deeply influenced by linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

We invite you to tackle these challenges together.

We will provide a unique dataset featuring performers from two distinct cultures expressing 12 emotions across various scenarios. We highly value models that deliver not only strong recognition performance but also clear explainability.

Whether your background is in computer vision, psychology, or AI ethics, we want your unique perspective. Join us in building culturally aware, explainable emotion AI that respects the richness of human movement.