Humies

Entries are hereby solicited for awards totalling $10,000 for human-competitive results that have been produced by any form of genetic and evolutionary computation (including, but not limited to genetic algorithms, genetic programming, evolution strategies, evolutionary programming, learning classifier systems, grammatical evolution, gene expression programming, differential evolution, genetic improvement, etc.) and that have been published in the open literature between the deadline for the previous competition and the deadline for the current competition.

The competition will be held as part of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (GECCO) conference operated by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group (SIG) on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (SIGEVO). Entries chosen to be finalists will be made at the conference. The winners of the awards will be announced during the conference.

Important Dates

Friday May 29, 2026 — Deadline for entries (consisting of one TEXT file, PDF files for one or more papers, and possible "in press" documentation (explained below)). Please send entries to goodman at msu dot edu.
Friday June 12, 2026 — Finalists will be notified by e-mail.
Friday June 26, 2026 — Any finalists who will not be in São José to present in person must submit a 10-minute video presentation (or the link and instructions for downloading the presentation, NOT a YouTube link) to goodman at msu dot edu. Finalists who will present in person must submit a copy of their (PowerPoint) slides for the advance use of the judges, to goodman at msu dot edu.
July 13-17, 2026 — GECCO conference (the schedule for the Humies session is not yet final, so please check the GECCO program as it is updated for the time of the Humies session, likely on Wednesday or Thursday).
(Check GECCO schedule for posting) — Presentation session, where either a live presentation will be given or the the 10-minute video will be shown (and later made available for viewing).
Friday, July 17, 2026 — Announcement of awards at the plenary session of the GECCO conference.

Judging Commitee