The deadline to submit a proposal is February 25, 2026.

The 25th annual SciPy conference will be held at the University of Minnesota, July 13-19, 2026. The conference brings together participants from industry, academia, and government to showcase their latest projects, learn from skilled users and developers, and collaborate on code development. The full program will consist of 2 days of tutorials (July 13-14), 3 days of general conference (July 15-17), and 2 days of developer sprints (July 18-19).

==>Talk & Poster Presentations<==
Highlighted Tracks
This year we are happy to announce two highlighted tracks that run in parallel with the general conference tracks:

Spirit of SciPy

25 years ago, the first SciPy conference convened scientists eager to work together to solve open problems with Python. As the community and conference have grown, the spirit of this first meeting remains central to SciPy. This highlighted track celebrates our ongoing commitment to open-source software and the ethos of collaborative learning, sharing and discovery. We invite submissions that showcase stories of ground-up collaborations, interdisciplinary uses or unconventional repurposing of domain-specific tools, and projects and organizations that trace their roots to SciPy itself.

Data-Driven Discovery, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

This track aims to bring together the latest advances in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) and areas of data-driven insights that focus on advancing novel discovery across fields and applications in science and industry. This includes the development and application of new and existing open-source tools and techniques that have been influential in advancing scientific progress. We encourage submissions that include stories of applications and improvements to simulation and simulation-based inference.

Additional Conference Tracks

General

This track showcases tools and projects that highlight the broad applicability to use Python in science. This includes the development and application of open-source tools in the SciPy ecosystem. We also encourage submissions that don’t fit well into any of the existing domain-specific tracks, as well as interdisciplinary topics that would benefit a wider audience.

Physics and Astronomy

This track highlights the use of Python in physics, astronomy, and related fields. Topics include, but are not limited to, data analysis, simulation, and visualization in experimental and theoretical physics and astronomy. This year we are encouraging submissions related to quantum information science, including quantum computing, simulation, and control. We continue to welcome submissions demonstrating how Python advances discovery and innovation in understanding the physical universe.

Environmental, Earth, and Climate Sciences

This track welcomes submissions showcasing how Python is applied to understand, model, and solve scientific problems in the earth, environmental, and climate sciences, broadly construed. This includes the domains of earth, ocean, geo, ecological, environmental, climate, and atmospheric science and engineering.

Maintainers and Community

This track covers the unique work and challenges experienced by the maintainer community. . Topics include, but are not limited to, experience and lessons learned from building an organization, launching an important technical change, maintaining an open-source project, and growing communities of contributors or users. We encourage speakers to go beyond “project updates” and instead share stories that convey transferable lessons to others who are building or want to build open source projects and communities.

Biological and Medical Sciences

This track showcases the use of Python in medicine, biology, and the life sciences. Topics include, but are not limited to, computational biology, medical imaging, health data analysis, bioinformatics, and applications involving medical instruments and laboratory automation. We welcome submissions illustrating how Python advances research, discovery, and innovation in understanding living systems and improving human health.

Scientific Computing in Education

This track highlights the use of scientific computing in academia, both in teaching and research. Key topics include, but are not limited to, the use of scientific computing in the classroom, tools for teaching and learning, and academic research projects using the Python ecosystem. We particularly encourage submissions from student speakers on research or learning experiences.

Does your tool apply to a broad audience? Do you not see any other tracks that are thematically appropriate for your talk? Do you want to talk about lots of tools spanning many domains? Submit your proposal to the General track!

Planning for your proposal submission? Proposals must be submitted by February 25, 2026 AOE. Here's what you'll need for a submission:

Abstract
Your Abstract will appear in the online schedule and give attendees a sense of your talk. This should be around 100 words or less. The abstract will be what appears in the conference schedule.

Description
Your placement in the program will be based on reviews of your description. This should be a roughly 500-word outline of your presentation. This outline should concisely describe software of interest to the SciPy community, tools or techniques for more effective computing, or how scientific Python was applied to solve a research problem. A traditional background/motivation, methods, results, and conclusion structure is encouraged but not required. Links to project websites, source code repositories, figures, full papers, and evidence of public speaking ability are encouraged.

You must choose whether to submit as a talk, tutorial, or poster. Talks that are not selected will automatically be considered for a poster slot. Please note that a virtual-only poster is possible.

The form allows you to upload a paper. This is optional. You do not need to upload a paper in order to submit a talk or poster.

Tips for Submitting a Proposal
The SciPy Conference is in awe of the work that is being done in the community. We receive many interesting and thought-provoking proposals but we have a limited number of spaces. Please take a look at our tips below to improve your chances of having a talk or poster accepted by the conference. In the unfortunate event that your proposal is not accepted, please keep in mind that you are welcome to give a lightning talk, book a room for a Birds of a Feather discussion, or talk to the Program Committee about displaying your work as a poster in lieu of a talk.

• Submit your proposal early. While early submission does not factor into the proposal evaluation process, proposals submitted early tend to be higher quality. You can edit your proposal up until the deadline and get advice at the Program Committee’s office hours.
• In your description, be sure to include answers to some basic questions: Who is the intended audience for your talk? What, specifically, will attendees learn from your talk?
• Ensure that your talk will be relevant to a broad range of people. If your talk is on a particular Python package or piece of software, it should be useful to more than a niche group.
• Include links to source code, articles, blog posts, or other writing that adds context to the presentation.
• If you've given a talk, tutorial, or other presentation before, include that information as well as a link to slides or a video if they're available.
• SciPy talks are 25 minutes with 2-3 minutes for questions. Please keep the length of time in mind as you structure your outline.
• Your talk should not be a commercial for your company’s product. However, you are welcome to talk about how your company solved a problem, or notable open-source projects that may benefit attendees.

Many of these tips are adapted from the PyCon Proposal Resources. Thanks PSF!

==>How proposals are reviewed and selected<==
For those of you new to the SciPy community, we wanted to demystify the process we use to select talks, tutorials, and posters. The talks, posters and tutorials go through a similar process consisting of open reviews (i.e., the identities of the submitter and the reviewers are open).
Submissions are automatically assigned to reviewers with expertise in the domain specific topic. Each submission is reviewed by at least 3 reviewers and rated in the following categories:
- Overall evaluation. (numerical score -2 to 2 + text evaluation)
- Is the proposal interesting to a broad range of people in the SciPy community? (numerical score -2 to 2)
- Is the proposal clear? (numerical score -2 to 2)
- Is the proposal complete? (numerical score -2 to 2)
- How relevant and immediately useful is the topic? (numerical score -2 to 2)

The submissions and their reviews are provided to the Track Chairs. The Program Committee Co-Chairs fill this role for the general track. The Chairs review the abstracts, scores and comments for all the submissions and make recommendations to the Program Committee Co-Chairs. The Program Committee Co-Chairs take the recommendations and build the initial SciPy schedule.

Those that submitted talks or posters that are selected are contacted by the Committee and they are asked to confirm their attendance at the SciPy Conference. The Program Committee works with the Track chairs to identify a second tier of talks that will be added to the schedule in the event that some of the initial selections are not able to attend.

The Tutorial Co-Chairs review the scores and comments for all tutorials and build the schedule. They consider the scores as well as balancing the level of the tutorials (beginner, intermediate, advanced) and striving for a broad mix of topics.

If you have questions about the process, feel free to reach out to the Program Committee Co-Chairs at community@scipy.org.

==>Proceedings<==
The Proceedings Submission
Once your talk is accepted, presenters have the option to submit up to an 8 page paper by June 6 for the SciPy2026 Proceedings. The paper should follow the same guidelines as the abstract/description but elaborate on the details to help thoroughly understand the material. The paper will be reviewed by 2 reviewers assigned by the Proceedings Committee. The authors are expected to work with the reviewers to incorporate their comments. The paper will be included in the Proceedings after the reviewers’ and editor’s approval.

By submitting a paper to the SciPy Proceedings, you are consenting to having your paper published and assigned a DOI. Even if you aren't going to write a paper, please consider volunteering to help review!

==>Tutorials<==
Topics
Tutorials should be focused on covering a well-defined topic in a hands-on manner. We want to see attendees coding! We encourage submissions to be designed to allow at least 50% of the time for hands-on exercises even if this means the subject matter needs to be limited. Tutorials will be 4 hours in duration. In your tutorial application, you can indicate what prerequisite skills and knowledge will be needed for your tutorial, and the approximate expected level of knowledge of your students (i.e., beginner, intermediate, advanced).

We are looking for interesting techniques or packages, helping new or advanced Python programmers develop better or faster scientific applications.

Information for tutorial presenters
Selection
Accepted tutorials will be announced late March. Final tutorial instructions and a draft of materials for attendees will be due on June 12th. This will include final version numbers of required software, detailed and tested installation instructions. If there is no installation required because you are providing a runtime environment for attendees, please state that explicitly. In addition, there will be a pre-tutorial slack channel created before the conference, and tutorial presenters are expected to make themselves available to help with setup instructions. Final tutorial materials will be due on June 28th.

Materials
All tutorial materials (notebooks, slides, etc) should be available to all tutorial attendees prior to the tutorial.

Stipend
In recognition of the effort required to plan and prepare a high quality tutorial, we pay a stipend of $1,000 to each instructor (or team of instructors) for each half-day session they lead.

For the submission you will need the following information:
- A short bio of the presenter or team members, containing a description of past experiences as a trainer/teacher/speaker, and (ideally) links to videos of these experiences if available.
- A list of prerequisite skills expected of attendees, so that participants can choose level appropriate tutorials.
- A description of the tutorial, suitable for posting on the SciPy website for attendees to view. It should include the target audience, the expected level of knowledge prior to the class, and the goals of the class.
- A more detailed outline of the tutorial content, including the duration of each part and exercise sessions. Please include a description of how you plan to make the tutorial hands-on.
- Detailed installation instructions for various common Python environments so that attendees can have everything ready for participating before heading to SciPy.
- If available, the tutorial notes, slides, exercise files, and IPython notebooks, even if they are preliminary.

Authors of exemplary submissions from previous years have generously agreed to share their proposals to help new instructors: https://github.com/scipy-conference/scipy-conference/tree/master/data/tutorial_submissions

Submissions close on 2026-02-25 15:20 (US/Central), 2 months from now.