The planned dates are as follows (all times are UTC):
Submission Site: OpenReview.
Submission Open: July 28, 2026
Submission Deadline: August 26, 2026, 08:00 UTC
Review Period: September 3 - September 21, 2026
Notification: September 29, 2026
Camera Ready: TBD
Workshop Date: December 11 or 12, 2026 (NeurIPS 2026, Sydney, in person)
We welcome theoretical, algorithmic, empirical, benchmark, systems, and position contributions on physical understanding for decision-making. Topics of interest span four themes; please see the Home page for the full workshop scope.
Modeling Physical Systems: dynamics, contact, deformable objects, 3D and 4D world models, neural simulation, video-to-physics
Physical Perception and Active Interaction: learning affordances, acting to reduce uncertainty, discovering physical constraints under partial observability
Causal and Counterfactual Physical Reasoning: interventions, counterfactual outcomes, stability analysis, distribution shift
Decision-Making, Evaluation, and Deployment: planning, model-based RL, control, long-horizon execution, evaluation methodology, sim-to-real transfer, safety and failure recovery
For a detailed summary of our main focus areas, please visit the front page. Contributions may vary in length from 2 to 9 main pages (Tiny Paper: ≤ 4 main pages; Full Paper: ≤ 9 main pages — please select your track in the OpenReview submission form) and unlimited additional pages of references and appendix, formatted in accordance with the NeurIPS 2026 paper format. We also welcome shorter submissions as Tiny Papers, particularly those showcasing proof-of-concept work, including live demonstrations, code repositories, or blog posts.
The paper submission deadline is: August 26, 2026, 08:00 UTC.
Papers must be submitted via OpenReview.
Double-Blind Review Policy:
The review process will be conducted under a double-blind protocol. Submissions must be fully anonymized: please remove author names, affiliations, acknowledgements, and any identifying information, including in supplementary materials. We aim to provide at least 3 reviews for each submission. Optional supplementary material (code, videos, or demos) may be uploaded as a single zip file and must also be fully anonymized.
Dual-Submission Policy:
Submissions to this workshop are non-archival, allowing for the inclusion of ongoing or unpublished work. We welcome papers currently under review at other venues, but work that has already been published or accepted elsewhere is not eligible. This policy applies for the entire duration of our review process.
Transparency:
We will only publicly share the list of accepted papers and their corresponding articles. Reviews and rejected submissions will remain private.
Contact:
Please email physicalunderstanding.workshop@gmail.com if you have questions.