Welcome to the website of EXIST 2026, the sixth edition of the sEXism Identification in Social neTworks task at CLEF 2026.

EXIST is a series of scientific events and shared tasks on sexism identification in social networks. EXIST aims to foster the automatic detection of sexism in a broad sense, from explicit misogyny to other subtle expressions that involve implicit sexist behaviours (EXIST 2021, EXIST 2022, EXIST 2023, EXIST 2024, EXIST 2025). The sixth edition of the EXIST shared task will be held as a Lab in CLEF 2026, on September 21-24, 2026, at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany .

Sexism remains a pervasive form of social discrimination, reflected across multiple dimensions such as sexual violence, economic inequality, and online harassment. Recent data show that women represent around 85%-90% of sexual violence victims in the USA, Europe, Spain, and Australia. The gender pay gap continues to disadvantage women, who earn on average between 8.7% and 21.8% less than men across these same regions. In the digital sphere, women also experience disproportionate levels of harassment and discrimination, with reported rates ranging from 16% in the USA to 41% in Australia, compared to 5-26% for men. In this context, the development of AI systems capable of detecting sexism on social media presents a particularly relevant challenge. The perception of what constitutes sexist behavior or expression involves a certain degree of subjectivity, as it may be influenced by cultural norms, personal experiences, and emotional reactions that cannot be fully captured through linguistic data alone. Despite significant advances in computational modeling, the mechanisms underlying human decision-making remain only partially understood. Empirical evidence suggests that human judgments are shaped not only by conscious factors —such as socio-demographic background, prior experiences, and explicit beliefs—but also by unconscious cues, including emotions, physiological states, and sensory responses that subtly guide perception and evaluation. Current AI models, largely trained on textual or visual data, lack access to these deeper layers of cognitive and affective information, limiting their ability to replicate or interpret complex social phenomena. To bridge this gap, it becomes essential to explore new training paradigms that integrate human-centered and sensor-based data to provide richer insights into how individuals consciously and unconsciously perceive sexist content.

In EXIST 2026, we take a significant step forward by integrating the principles of Human-Centered AI (HCAI) into the development of automatic tools for detecting sexism online. Recognizing that no single interpretation can fully capture the diversity of human perception, we go beyond traditional annotation paradigms by combining Learning With Disagreement (LeWiDi) with sensor-based data (EEG, heart rate, and eye-tracking signals) collected from subjects exposed to potentially sexist content, with the aim of capturing unconscious responses to sexism. This dual approach represents a breakthrough in dataset creation for sensitive and value-laden tasks: for the first time, datasets will include not only divergent judgments from annotators, but also the embodied traces of how these content affect. This richer, multidimensional annotation process will enable the development of more inclusive, equitable, and socially aware AI systems for detecting sexism in complex multimedia formats like memes and short videos, where ambiguity and affect play a critical role.

In past editions, teams from over 50 countries submitted more than 1,700 runs, achieving remarkable outcomes, especially in the sexism detection task. However, there is still room for improvement, especially in when the problem is addressed under the LeWeDi paradigm in a multimedia context.

Building upon the EXIST 2025 dataset, this edition focuses exclusively on multimedia formats, comprising six experimental subtasks applied to images (memes) and videos (TikToks). Participants are challenged to address three main objectives: sexism identification (x.1), source intention detection (x.2), and sexism categorization (x.3).

A groundbreaking feature of this lab is the integration of Human-Centered AI principles. In the new experimental framework introduced in EXIST 2026, selected subjects were exposed to the multimedia content while their physiological and behavioral responses were continuously recorded. These multimodal signals (including eye tracking, heart rate, and EEG) enrich the traditional annotation labels, providing a deeper window into how users unconsciously process and react to sexist content in English and Spanish.

See the next sections for details and examples on each subtask (numbering is consistent with EXIST 2025).

Subtask 2.1: Sexism Identification in Memes

This is a binary classification subtask consisting on determining wheter a meme describes a sexist situation or criticizes a sexist behaviour), and classifying it into two categories: YES and NO. The following figures are some examples of both types of memes, respectively.

Subtask 2.2: Source Intention in Memes

Once a message has been classified as sexist, the second subtask aims to categorize the meme according to the intention of the author, which provides insights in the role played by social networks on the emission and dissemination of sexist messages. Due to the characteristics of the memes, systems should only classify memes with DIRECT or JUDGEMENTAL labels.

• DIRECT: the intention was to write a message that is sexist by itself or incites to be sexist.
• JUDGEMENTAL: the intention was to judge, since the tweet describes sexist situations or behaviours with the aim of condemning them.

The following figures are some examples of them, respectively.

Subtask 2.3: Sexism Categorization in Memes

Many facets of a woman’s life may be the focus of sexist attitudes including domestic and parenting roles, career opportunities, sexual image, and life expectations, to name a few. Automatically detecting which of these facets of women are being more frequently attacked in social networks will facilitate the development of policies to fight against sexism. According to this, each sexist meme must be categorized in one or more of the following categories

• IDEOLOGICAL AND INEQUALITY: The text discredits the feminist movement, rejects inequality between men and women, or presents men as victims of gender-based oppression.
• STEREOTYPING AND DOMINANCE: The text expresses false ideas about women that suggest they are more suitable to fulfill certain roles (mother, wife, family caregiver, faithful, tender, loving, submissive, etc.), or inappropriate for certain tasks (driving, hardwork, etc), or claims that men are somehow superior to women.
• OBJECTIFICATION: The text presents women as objects apart from their dignity and personal aspects, or assumes or describes certain physical qualities that women must have in order to fulfill traditional gender roles (compliance with beauty standards, hypersexualization of female attributes, women’s bodies at the disposal of men, etc.).
• SEXUAL VIOLENCE: Sexual suggestions, requests for sexual favors or harassment of a sexual nature (rape or sexual assault) are made.
• MISOGYNY AND NON-SEXUAL VIOLENCE: The text expressses hatred and violence towards women.

The following figures are some examples of categorized memes.

(a) Stereotyping

(e) Ideological

(c) Objectification

(d) Misogyny

(b) Sexual violence

Subtask 3.1: Sexism Identification in Videos

This subtask is the same subtask 2.1. The following figures are some examples of videos classified as YES or NO.

Subtask 3.2: Source Intention in Videos

This subtask replicates subtask 2.2 for memes, but it takes as source videos. The following examples are some videos representing each category.

Subtask 3.3: Sexism Categorization in Videos

This subtask aims to classify sexist videos according to the categorization provided for subtask 2.3: (i) IDEOLOGICAL AND INEQUALITY, (ii) STEREOTYPING AND DOMINANCE, (iii) OBJECTIFICATION, (iv) SEXUAL VIOLENCE and (v) MISOGYNY AND NON-SEXUAL VIOLENCE. The following figures are some examples of categorized videos.

If you want to participate in the EXIST 2026 shared task at CLEF 2026, please proceed to register for the lab at CLEF 2026 Labs Registration site. Once you have filled out the form, you will receive an email with information on how to join the EXIST 2026 Discord Forum, where EXIST-Datasets, EXIST-Communications, EXIST-Questions/Answers, and EXIST-Guidelines will be made available to participants. This is a manual process, so it might take some time. Please don’t worry, :-).

Participants will be required to submit their runs and will have the possibility to provide a technical report that should include a brief description of their approach, focusing on the adopted algorithms, models and resources, a summary of their experiments, and an analysis of the obtained results. Although we recommend to participate in all subtasks and in both languages, participants are allowed to participate just in one of them (e.g. subtask 2.1) and in one language (e.g. English).

Publications

Technical reports will be published in CLEF 2026 Proceedings at CEUR-WS.org.

• 17 November 2025: Registration opens.
• 26 February 2026: Training set available.
• 9 April 2026: Test set available.
• 23 April 2026: Registration closes.
• 7 May 2026: Runs submission due to organizers.
• 28 May 2026: Results notification to participants.
• 4 June 2026: Submission of Working Notes by participants.
• 30 June 2026: Notification of acceptance (peer reviews).
• 6 July 2026: Camera-ready participant papers due to organizers.
• 21-24 September 2026: EXIST 2026 at CLEF Conference.

Note: All deadlines are 11:59PM UTC-12:00 (“anywhere on Earth”).

The EXIST 2026 Memes Dataset will be used in Task 2.X (subtasks 1–3), while the EXIST 2026 Videos Dataset will be used in Task 3.X (subtasks 1–3).

This edition builds upon the EXIST 2025 dataset and extends it with additional sensor-based information collected under a Human-Centered AI framework, enriching the original annotations with complementary physiological data.

This collection integrates and extends the datasets developed for EXIST 2024 (memes) and EXIST 2025 (TikTok videos), which have been reused within a novel experimental setting designed to explore how individuals perceive and interpret sexism in online media. In this new dataset, subjects’ conscious judgments are reflected in the labels they assigned to each instance, while unconscious or implicit reactions are captured through sensor data such as eye tracking, heart rate, and EEG activity. The sensor data captured during the annotation process will be provided to the participants to use (if desired) in the training process. Detailed descriptions of the annotation methodologies for the EXIST 2024 and 2025 datasets are available in Overview of EXIST 2025 and Overview of EXIST 2024.

In the new novel experimental setting, each session followed a structured protocol comprising several stages. First, subjects were fitted with physiological sensors for electrocardiography (ECG), eye tracking, and electroencephalography (EEG), specifically using Pupil Labs Neon glasses (binocular gaze recording at 200 Hz), a Garmin Venu 3 smartwatch (continuous heart-rate and inter-beat interval monitoring), and an OpenBCI Cyton 16-channel EEG headset (10–20 system, 250 Hz). A two-minute resting-state baseline was recorded before exposure to the stimuli. Second, subjects completed a demographic questionnaire, administered only once, that collected information such as age, gender, education level, country of residence, and occupation. Third, they reported their average daily social media usage (in hours) and the percentage of time spent on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, X/Twitter, and Facebook.

The next stage involved completing a cognitive thinking style questionnaire composed of 24 items rated on a six-point Likert scale (from “totally disagree” to “totally agree”). The items were grouped into four cognitive dimensions: open thought, closed thought, intuitive thought, and effortful thought, capturing different aspects of individual reasoning and information processing tendencies. Finally, before each experimental session, subjects completed a visual analogue scale (0–100) to self-assess their current emotional state, indicating the degree to which they felt happy, sad, calm, tense, energetic, or sleepy.

During the experiment, subjects were seated comfortably while stimuli were displayed on a screen until they provided a response. A 3 second pause followed each stimulus to minimize carry-over effects between consecutive items. Each session lasted approximately 45 minutes, during which subjects viewed 100–170 stimuli. After each stimulus, they answered brief control questions to ensure engagement and comprehension. All participants provided consent for the anonymous use of their data for research purposes.

The EXIST 2026 dataset comprises 8,294 multimedia instances, including memes and short videos, in both English and Spanish. The EXIST 2026 Memes Dataset contains more than 5,000 labeled memes, both in English and Spanish. In particular, the training set contains 3,984 memes and the test set contains 1,053 memes. Distribution between both languages has been balanced. Additionally, a small number of memes from the 2025 edition have been removed after detecting duplicated instances that were not identified during the initial dataset creation process.

Overviews previous LeWiDi EXIST editions:

• Laura Plaza, Jorge Carrillo-De-Albornoz, Iván Arcos, Paolo Rosso, Damiano Spina, Enrique Amigó, Julio Gonzalo, Roser Morante. Overview of EXIST 2025: Learning with Disagreement for Sexism Identification and Characterization in Tweets, Memes, and TikTok Video. Carrillo-De-Albornoz, J., et al. Experimental IR Meets Multilinguality, Multimodality, and Interaction. CLEF 2025. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 16089. Springer, Cham. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-032-04354-2.

• Laura Plaza, Jorge Carrillo-de-Albornoz, Victor Ruiz, Alba Maeso, Berta Chulvi, Paolo Rosso, Enrique Amigó, Julio Gonzalo, Roser Morante and Damiano Spina. (2024). Overview of EXIST 2024 - Learning with Disagreement for Sexism Identification and Characterization in Tweets and Memes. In L. Goeuriot et al. (Eds.), Experimental IR Meets Multilinguality, Multimodality, and Interaction (pp. 93–117). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.

• Laura Plaza, Jorge Carrillo-de-Albornoz, Roser Morante, Enrique Amigó, Julio Gonzalo, Damiano Spina & Paolo Rosso . Overview of EXIST 2023 – Learning with Disagreement for Sexism Identification and Characterization. Arampatzis, A., et al. Experimental IR Meets Multilinguality, Multimodality, and Interaction. CLEF 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14163. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42448-9_23.

Extended Overviews previous LeWiDi EXIST editions:

• Laura Plaza, Jorge Carrillo-De-Albornoz, Iván Arcos, Paolo Rosso, Damiano Spina, Enrique Amigó, Julio Gonzalo, Roser Morante. Overview of EXIST 2025: Learning with Disagreement for Sexism Identification and Characterization in Tweets, Memes, and TikTok Videos (Extended Overview). Guglielmo Faggioli et al.Working Notes of the Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum (CLEF 2025). CEUR Working Notes Vol-4038.

• Laura Plaza, Jorge Carrillo de Albornoz, Víctor Ruiz, Alba Maeso, Berta Chulvi, Paolo Rosso, Enrique Amigó, Julio Gonzalo, Roser Morante, Damiano Spina: Overview of EXIST 2024 - Learning with Disagreement for Sexism Identification and Characterization in Tweets and Memes (Extended Overview). Working Notes of the Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum (CLEF 2024). CEUR Working Notes Vol-3740.: 908-941

• Laura Plaza, Jorge Carrillo-de-Albornoz, Roser Morante, Enrique Amigó, Julio Gonzalo, Damiano Spina & Paolo Rosso . Overview of EXIST 2023 – Learning with Disagreement for Sexism Identification and Characterization (Extended Overview). Mohammad Aliannejadi, et al.Working Notes of the Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum (CLEF 2023). CEUR Working Notes Vol-3497.

Working Notes previous LeWiDi EXIST editions:

• All 2025 proceedings available at: EXIST 2025 Proceedings.
• All 2024 proceedings available at: EXIST 2024 Proceedings.
• All 2023 proceedings available at: EXIST 2023 Proceedings.

Video and Meme related work

• Iván Arcós and Paolo Rosso (2024) Sexism Identification on TikTok: A Multimodal AI Approach with Text, Audio, and Video. In: Proc. 15th Int. Conf. of the CLEF Association, CLEF 2024, Grenoble, France, September 9-12, Springer-Verlag, LNCS(14958), pp. 61-73
• Italiani, P., Gimeno-Gómez, D., Ragazzi, L., Moro, G., Rosso, P. (2026). MEMEWEAVER: Inter-Meme Graph Reasoning for Sexism and Misogyny Detection. In Findings EACL 2026.
• Arcos, I., Rosso, P., Gomis, E. (2026). Human-Centered Multimodal Fusion for Sexism Detection in Memes with Eye-Tracking, Heart Rate, and EEG Signals. In Proceedings LREC 2026 http://arxiv.org/abs/2602.23862

Sensor Data and NLP related work

• Alaçam, Ö., Hoeken, S., & Zarrieß, S. (2024). Eyes Don’t Lie: Subjective Hate Annotation and Detection with Gaze. In Proceedings of EMNLP 2024 (pp. 187–205).

• Zhang, Y., Li, Q., Nahata, S., Jamal, T., Cheng, S., Cauwenberghs, G., & Jung, T.-P. (2024). Integrating LLMs, EEG, and eye-tracking for word-level neural state classification. IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 32, 3465–3475.

• Oğuz, F. E., Alkan, A., & Schöler, T. (2023). Emotion detection from ECG signals with different learning algorithms and automated feature engineering. Signal, Image and Video Processing, 17(7), 3783–3791.

• Yoon, H., Tolera, B. A., Gong, T., Lee, K., & Lee, S.-J. (2024). By My Eyes: Grounding multimodal large language models with sensor data via visual prompting. In Proceedings of EMNLP 2024 (pp. 2219–2241).