Smart Computing Frontier (SCF 2026)
International Conference on Metaverse (METAVERSE 2026)
https://www.servicessociety.org/metaverse , August 22 - 25, 2026, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Theme: Agentic AI as a Service (AAIaaS) for Metaverse
Building Agentic and Immersive Digital Worlds
Introduction
The International Conference on Metaverse (METAVERSE) is an international forum for advancing the foundations, architectures, technologies, experiences, governance models, and applications of immersive and spatial digital environments.
The metaverse encompasses persistent or continuously evolving digital spaces in which people, intelligent agents, organizations, and virtual objects can interact. These environments may combine virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, spatial computing, digital humans, simulation, digital twins, real-time collaboration, and connections with the physical world.
The research value of the metaverse extends beyond visual immersion. It concerns how shared digital environments are represented, generated, synchronized, experienced, governed, and connected with real-world activities and services.
Agentic AI creates a new stage in this development. Intelligent agents can inhabit virtual environments, understand spatial and social context, interact through digital bodies, assist users, create content, coordinate activities, and participate in persistent virtual communities.
METAVERSE 2026 welcomes original research, system innovations, empirical studies, tools, benchmarks, user studies, and evidence-based applications that advance immersive and spatial computing.
Submissions should clearly explain why immersive interaction, spatial computing, persistence, embodied presence, or shared virtual environments are essential to the proposed contribution.
METAVERSE 2026 Theme
The theme of METAVERSE 2026 is:
Agentic AI as a Service for the Metaverse
Traditional virtual environments rely heavily on predefined scenes, scripted characters, and user-controlled interactions. Agentic AI enables digital entities to perceive their surroundings, maintain memory, reason about goals, communicate naturally, coordinate with people and other agents, and take context-sensitive actions.
For the METAVERSE community, the central question is:
How can intelligent agents inhabit, understand, create, and collaborate within persistent spatial environments as dependable services?
Agentic AI is transforming immersive environments:
· From scripted characters to goal-directed embodied agents
· From static scenes to adaptive and co-created worlds
· From avatar control to human–agent social collaboration
· From passive content consumption to situated interaction and action
· From isolated experiences to persistent service ecosystems
· From predefined narratives to responsive and personalized experiences
· From virtual simulation to coordinated digital–physical services
Agentic systems can serve as virtual instructors, collaborators, guides, performers, designers, caregivers, operators, and simulation participants. They can also help generate environments, manage virtual communities, personalize interaction, and connect virtual-world activities with external tools and services.
These capabilities introduce significant challenges involving identity, consent, privacy, behavioral safety, transparency, social norms, digital ownership, and governance. Users must be able to distinguish agents from people, understand an agent’s role and authority, and retain meaningful control over their interactions.
METAVERSE 2026 invites researchers and practitioners to develop trustworthy and human-centered foundations for agentic and immersive digital worlds.
Scope and Topics of Interest
METAVERSE focuses on immersive and spatial computing, persistent virtual environments, embodied agents, digital humans, shared-world architectures, virtual–physical integration, user experience, and metaverse governance.
Research whose primary contribution concerns general AI models, IoT devices, edge-resource management, cloud infrastructure, blockchain protocols, Web services, or general service engineering should be submitted to the corresponding SCF conference unless it makes a clear contribution to immersive or spatial digital environments.
Topics include, but are not limited to:
1. Agentic and Embodied Intelligence
· Embodied agents in virtual and mixed-reality environments
· Autonomous characters, digital humans, and intelligent avatars
· Spatially grounded perception, reasoning, memory, and action
· Human–agent and agent–agent interaction in shared worlds
· Social behavior and coordination among virtual agents
· Safety, transparency, and human oversight for embodied agents
2. Spatial Computing and Immersive Interaction
· Virtual, augmented, and mixed-reality systems
· Spatial interfaces and three-dimensional interaction
· Tracking, mapping, localization, and spatial understanding
· Gesture, gaze, voice, haptic, and multimodal interaction
· Telepresence and immersive collaboration
· Accessibility, usability, presence, and cybersickness
3. Metaverse Architectures and Interoperability
· Persistent and real-time shared-world architectures
· Scalable multiuser and distributed simulation systems
· World-state synchronization and consistency
· Cross-platform identity, avatar, and asset portability
· Metaverse protocols, standards, and interoperability
· Integration of virtual environments with external services
4. Digital Humans, Content, and World Generation
· Avatar modeling, animation, behavior, and personalization
· Digital-human appearance, motion, speech, and expression
· Generative AI for virtual environments and interactive narratives
· Three-dimensional content creation, capture, and reconstruction
· Procedural and adaptive world generation
· Digital twins and virtual representations of physical environments
5. Security, Privacy, Safety, and Governance
· Identity, authentication, impersonation, and avatar security
· Privacy of biometric, behavioral, and spatial data
· Harassment prevention, content moderation, and user safety
· Child safety, accessibility, inclusion, and digital well-being
· Virtual ownership, provenance, and digital rights
· Community governance, accountability, and ethical design
6. Immersive Services and Applications
· Education, training, and collaborative work
· Healthcare, rehabilitation, and well-being
· Industrial simulation, digital twins, and remote operations
· Culture, tourism, media, entertainment, and live events
· Retail, design, real estate, and customer experience
Deployment studies, user evaluations, and industry practice
Paper Tracks
The METAVERSE 2026 technical program includes four submission tracks.
Research Track
The Research Track welcomes original and technically rigorous contributions that advance immersive computing, spatial interaction, virtual-world architectures, embodied agents, digital humans, or metaverse governance.
Research papers should:
· Clearly define the metaverse or spatial-computing problem
· Explain why immersion, spatiality, persistence, or shared presence is essential
· Explain the novelty relative to relevant literature
· Present a technically or empirically sound method
· Use appropriate baselines, system evaluation, or user studies
· Discuss limitations, risks, and threats to validity
· Demonstrate a generalizable contribution
Application and Industry Track
The Application and Industry Track focuses on deployed immersive systems, enterprise platforms, spatial applications, and evidence-based industry experience.
Papers should:
· Describe a significant real-world problem
· Explain the immersive environment and system architecture
· Present deployment evidence, user evaluation, or measurable outcomes
· Discuss usability, accessibility, safety, privacy, scalability, and cost
· Identify lessons transferable to other settings
· Clarify the practical or system-level innovation
Papers in this track do not need to introduce a new algorithm. However, they should contribute through immersive-system design, deployment evidence, user impact, operational innovation, or generalizable practical knowledge.
Short Paper Track
The Short Paper Track welcomes focused contributions, including:
· Promising early-stage research
· Novel immersive or spatial-computing concepts
· Emerging challenges and research visions
· Datasets, benchmarks, tools, and reusable artifacts
· Focused empirical findings or negative results
· Concise deployment and user-study reports
Short papers must clearly state their contribution, evidence, relationship to prior work, and limitations.
Special Paper Track
The Special Paper Track addresses designated emerging topics and community priorities announced by METAVERSE 2026. Submissions should follow the requirements of the corresponding special-track call.
Review and Submission Requirements
All submissions must report original and unpublished work and must not be under review elsewhere at the time of submission.
Each manuscript will be reviewed by at least three program committee members. Papers will be evaluated according to:
· Relevance to METAVERSE
· Originality and significance
· Technical or practical quality
· Strength of system or user evaluation
· Clarity and organization
· Reproducibility
· Research, user, or real-world impact
Papers should position their contributions accurately within the relevant international literature. Authors are encouraged to cite METAVERSE and other conferences or journals when genuinely relevant. Citation of any particular venue is not required.
Research Track and Application and Industry Track manuscripts are limited to 15 pages in the Springer LNCS format. Short Paper Track manuscripts are limited to 8 pages. Authors may purchase up to two additional pages, subject to the applicable publication fee. Special Paper Track submissions should follow the limits specified in the corresponding call.
Authors must use the official Springer LNCS templates:
· Microsoft Word template
· LaTeX template
Electronic submission in PDF or Word format is required. Manuscripts that do not follow the required format or exceed the permitted page limit may be returned without review.
A Research Track submission that primarily presents a deployed application or operational solution may be recommended for consideration by the Application and Industry Track.
At least one author of each accepted paper must register for METAVERSE 2026 and present the paper at the conference.
Paper Submission
Research Track
Submit to the METAVERSE 2026 Research Track: https://edas.info/newPaper.php?c=34936&track=136068
Application and Industry Track
Submit to the METAVERSE 2026 Application and Industry Track: https://edas.info/newPaper.php?c=34936&track=136067
Short Paper Track
Submit to the METAVERSE 2026 Short Paper Track: https://edas.info/newPaper.php?c=34936&track=136069
Special Paper Track
Submit to the METAVERSE 2026 Special Paper Track: https://edas.info/newPaper.php?c=34936&track=136070
Detailed instructions for manuscript preparation, submission, review, panels, tutorials, and workshops are available on the SCF author-guidance pages.
Conference Proceedings
Accepted and presented METAVERSE 2026 papers will be published in the conference proceedings, which are scheduled to appear in Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.
Springer makes LNCS proceedings available to major abstracting and indexing services. Final inclusion of a volume or individual paper is determined by the policies and selection criteria of each indexing service.
Under the current SCF publication arrangement, the METAVERSE 2026 proceedings are expected to become freely accessible through SpringerLink four years after publication.
Extended versions of selected papers may be invited to relevant partner journals. Journal submissions must include substantial extensions and will undergo the journal’s independent editorial and peer-review process.
Awards
METAVERSE 2026 will recognize outstanding contributions through:
· Best Paper Award
· Best Student Paper Award
For the Best Student Paper Award, the first author must be a full-time student.
Important Dates
Research, Application and Industry, and Short Paper Tracks:
Early-birds paper submission due: March 20, 2026
Review comments to Early-birds paper submission: April 10, 2026
Regular paper submission due: May 21, 2026
Review comments to Regular paper submission: June 15, 2026
Special track paper submission due: June 21, 2026
Review comments to Special track paper submission: June 25, 2026
Camera-ready manuscripts due: June 28, 2026
Conference dates: August 22 - 25, 2026
Academic Development
METAVERSE developed from the Services Society’s broader work on industry services and the World Congress on Services. The conference entered its current form in 2022 to focus on immersive services and shared digital environments.
METAVERSE 2022 and 2023 were held in Hawaii, USA; METAVERSE 2024 was held in Bangkok, Thailand; and METAVERSE 2025 was held in Hong Kong, China.
METAVERSE 2026 continues this development by examining how immersive environments can evolve from static virtual spaces into intelligent, interactive, and agentic service ecosystems.
METAVERSE and Smart Computing Frontier
METAVERSE is a member of the Smart Computing Frontier, a federation of ten co-located international conferences.
Within SCF, METAVERSE focuses on immersive and spatial environments, embodied agents, digital humans, persistent virtual worlds, digital–physical integration, user experience, and virtual-world governance.
Its scope is complementary to the other SCF conferences:
· ICWS focuses on Web interfaces, APIs, protocols, and Web-based services.
· SCC focuses on service engineering, lifecycle management, and value creation.
· CLOUD focuses on cloud infrastructure, platforms, and resource management.
· BigData focuses on large-scale data systems and analytics.
· AIMS focuses on AI models, multimodal understanding, and content generation.
· EDGE focuses on computing systems near data sources and users.
· ICIOT focuses on connected devices, sensing, communication, and physical action.
· ICCC focuses on cognitive computing.
· ICBC focuses on blockchain technologies and decentralized trust.
This structure enables cross-conference collaboration while preserving METAVERSE’s distinctive identity as the conference devoted to immersive and spatial digital environments.
Organizing Committee
METAVERSE 2026 Organizing Committee
Program Chairs
Prof. Shiping Chen, CSIRO Data61 & UNSW
Dr. Shiping Chen is a principal research scientist in CSIRO Data61. He also holds an conjoint Professor with the University of New Suouth Wales (UNSW) and Macquarie University. He has been working on distributed systems for over 20 years with focus on performance and security. He has published 240+ research papers and technical reports in these areas. He has been actively participating in research communities through publishing papers, journal editorships and conference PC/Chair services. His current research interests include: application security, blockchain and service-oriented trusted collaboration. He is a Fellow of Institute of Engineering Technology (FIET) and a senior member of the IEEE (SMIEEE).
Application and Industry Track Chairs
Mr. Jiacai Lai, Peking University (Tianjin Binhai) New Generation Information Technology Research Institute
Mr. Lai Jiacai is a specially invited expert at the Peking University (Tianjin Binhai) Institute of New Generation Information Technology. He graduated from the computer science programs at Tsinghua University and Peking University successively. Holding the titles of senior economist, senior engineer, and Senior Information System Project Management Professional, he is also a member of the Science Popularization Committee of the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence, a specially invited expert at the Zhongke Think Tank Research Institute, a director of the China International Association for Promoting Innovation of Science and Technology, an industry tutor for the Master of Digital Economy (MDE) program at the School of Economics, Minzu University of China, and an adjunct research fellow at the School of Information Engineering, Peking University. Engaged in the research, application, and dissemination of digital technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence, Mr. Lai Jiacai is a renowned science communicator. He has served as the chief editor of books including Digital Empowerment for High - Quality Development, Industrial Metaverse, Development, Application and Security of Fintech, and Development and Security of the Digital Economy, all of which were published by the People's Publishing House.
Application and Industry Track Chairs
Dr. Tiehua Zhang, Tongji University
Dr. Tiehua Zhang is currently an Assistant Professor at Tongji University. He earned his Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctoral degrees in Computer Science from Jilin University, The University of Melbourne, and Swinburne University of Technology, respectively. Dr. Zhang has extensive experience in both industry and academia, having served as a Systems Development Engineer at Our Community Group in Australia, a Visiting Scientist at KDDI Research in Japan, a Postdoctoral Researcher at Macquarie University in Australia, and as the International Risk Algorithm Architect/Lead at Ant Group. Dr. Zhang's main research areas include distributed collaborative learning, graph learning and relation mining, edge intelligence and service provisions. He has published over 40 papers in prominent international journals and conferences, including TOSEM, TII, IoT-J, TAI, NeurIPS, ICDE, MM, and ICSOC etc, and holds more than 10 international/domestic patents. His research has been honored with several awards, including the Swinburne Outstanding Thesis Award and the Research Excellence Award (HDR) etc. Dr. Zhang has been recognized as a Shanghai High-Level Talent (Overseas), Shanghai Science & Technology 35 under 35, and Shanghai Pudong New Area Pearl Elite Talent.
Operations Committee
Dr. Jing Zeng, China Gridcom Co., Ltd.
Dr. Yishuang Ning, Tsinghua University
Dr. Sheng He, Kingdee International Software Group Co., Ltd.
Dr. Zhuolin Mei, Jiujiang University
METAVERSE 2026 Program Committee
Dr. Changhao Chenli, Indiana Institute of Technology
Dr. Ben Falchuk, Peraton Labs
Dr. Xinxin Fan, IoTeX
Dr. Hasan Ali Ali Khattak, National University of Sciences and Technology
Dr. Stefano Sebastio, Raytheon Technologies
Dr. Kunjing Zhang, Institute of Information and Technology
Mr. Artem Barger, Idea Blockchain Research Lab
Mr. Atheer Alaa Hammad, Sr, Shivaji University
Mr. Avery Hughes, Indiana Institute of Technology
Mr. Hailong Liao, School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Mr. Nikhil Singhal, Meta
Mr. Rohan Vardhan, Meta (Facebook)
Mr. Yathish Naraganahalli Veeerabhadraiah, New York University
Mr. Santosh Yerasuri, California State University Northridge
Prof. Pengfei Wang, Dalian University of Technology
As part of the Smart Computing Frontier (SCF 2026), we are still looking for passionate and dedicated individuals to join the organizing committees.
Contact Information
For inquiries regarding METAVERSE 2026:
services AT ServicesSociety DOT org
For questions regarding Smart Computing Frontier conferences:
confs AT ServicesSociety DOT org
Researchers and practitioners are welcome to join the Services Society community and participate in future METAVERSE and SCF professional activities.
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