LChange'26 is the sixth workshop for computational approaches to language change with the focus on digital text corpora. Come join us for this exciting adventure!
Date: Mar 28, 2026
Event: 6th International Workshop on Computational Approaches to Historical Language Change 2026 (LChange'26)
Location: Rabat, Morocco
Website: https://www.changeiskey.org/event/2026-eacl-lchange/
After a dormant year, the LChange workshop is finally back and will be colocated with EACL 2026 in Rabat (Morocco), as a hybrid event! The main topic of the workshop remains the same: all aspects around computational approaches to language change with the focus on digital text corpora.
The workshop builds upon its first iteration in 2019, and the subsequent events (2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024). LChange'19 resulted in a book on Computational approaches to semantic change.
== Submissions ==
URL for submissions: https://openreview.net/group?id=eacl.org/EACL/2026/Workshop/LChange .
Long and short papers may consist of up to eight (8) and four (4) pages of content, respectively, plus unlimited references; final versions will be given one additional page of content so that reviewers' comments can be taken into account.
LChange’26 also welcomes papers focusing on releasing a dataset or a model; these papers fall into the short paper category. To encourage model and dataset sharing at the reviewing phase, model and dataset papers do not need to be anonymous.
Accepted papers will be presented orally or as posters and included in the workshop proceedings. Submissions are open to all, and are to be submitted anonymously. All papers will be refereed through a double-blind peer review process by at least three reviewers with final acceptance decisions made by the workshop organizers.
== Important Dates ==
Direct Submission deadline: December 28, 2025
Pre-reviewed (ARR) submission deadline: January 2, 2026
Notification of acceptance: January 23, 2026
Camera-ready paper due: February 3, 2026
Proceedings due (hard deadline): February 24, 2026
Pre-recorded video due (hard deadline): February 27, 2026
Workshop dates: March 28, 2026
== Workshop Topics ==
This workshop explores state-of-the-art computational methodologies, theories and digital text resources on exploring the time-varying nature of human language.
The aim of this workshop is three-fold. First, we want to provide pioneering researchers who work on computational methods, evaluation, and large-scale modelling of language change an outlet for disseminating cutting-edge research on topics concerning language change. We want to utilize this workshop as a platform for sharing state-of-the-art research progress in this fundamental domain of natural language research.
Second, in doing so we want to bring together domain experts across disciplines by connecting researchers in historical linguistics and philology with those that develop and test computational methods for detecting semantic change and laws of semantic change; and those that need knowledge (of the occurrence and shape) of language change, for example, in digital humanities and computational social sciences where text mining is applied to diachronic corpora subject to e.g., semantic change.
Third, the detection and modelling of language change using diachronic text and text mining raise fundamental theoretical and methodological challenges for future research.
Besides these goals, this workshop will also support discussion on the evaluation of computational methodologies for uncovering language change, for example through shared tasks. SemEval2020 Task1 on unsupervised detection of lexical semantic change was the first evaluation task in the field, since then, three more tasks have been completed in Italian, Russian, and Spanish, two of which were held at LChange.
We invite original research papers from a wide range of topics, including but not limited to:
- Novel methods for detecting diachronic semantic change and lexical replacement
- Automatic discovery and quantitative evaluation of laws of language change
- Computational theories and generative models of language change
- Sense-aware (semantic) change analysis
- Diachronic word sense disambiguation
- Novel methods for diachronic analysis of low-resource languages
- Novel methods for diachronic linguistic data visualization
- Novel applications and implications of language change detection
- Quantification of sociocultural influences on language change
- Cross-linguistic, phylogenetic, and developmental approaches to language change
- Novel datasets for cross-linguistic and diachronic analyses of language
Organisers: Nina Tahmasebi, Pierluigi Cassotti, Syrielle Montariol, Andrey Kutuzov, Netta Huebscherr, Elena Spaziani, and Naomi Baes.
== Anti-Harassment Policy ==
Our workshop highly values the open exchange of ideas, the freedom of thought and expression, and respectful scientific debate. We support and uphold the ACL Anti-Harassment policy, and any workshop participant should feel free to contact any of the workshop organisers or ACL (acl [at] aclweb.org), in case of any issues.