CVPR Workshop on Image Matching: Local Features and Beyond 2026

*Image Matching: Local Features & Beyond*
*CVPR 2026 Workshop*

*submission deadline *: March 16, 2026

Workshop: https://image-matching-workshop.github.io
CMT website for paper submission: 
https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/IMW2026


*Overview*

The 8th edition of the Image Matching Workshop is co-located as every 
year with CVPR 2026. Our goal is to encourage and highlight novel 
strategies for image matching that deviate from and advance traditional 
formulations, with a focus on large-scale, wide-baseline matching for 3D 
reconstruction and pose estimation.


*Challenge*

The workshop will once again feature an open challenge hosted on Kaggle. 
This year's challenge extends the previous year one with the purpose of 
serving as a reference dataset with a larger life span. Teams with best 
submissions will be invited to present their solutions at the workshop.

Challenge website: 
https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/image-matching-challenge-2025-ongoing


*Topics*

Workshop topics include (but are not limited to):
- Formulations of keypoint extraction and matching pipelines with deep 
networks.
- Application of geometric constraints into the training of deep networks.
- Large-scale evaluation of classical and modern methods for image 
matching, by means of our open challenge.
- Matching across different data modalities such as aerial versus ground.
- Leveraging additional cues such as semantics and mono-depth estimates.
- Attention mechanisms to match salient image regions.
- Connecting local descriptors/image matching with global 
descriptors/image retrieval.
- Methods addressing adversarial conditions where current methods fail 
(weather changes, day versus night, etc.).
- Integration of differentiable components into 3D reconstruction 
frameworks.
- New perception devices such as event-based cameras.
- Other topics related to image matching, structure from motion, 
mapping, and relocalization, such as privacy-preserving representations.


*Invited speakers*

- Paul-Edouard Sarlin, Google
- Nikhil Keetha, CMU / Meta


*Paper submission*

We invite paper submissions up to 8 pages, excluding references and 
acknowledgements. They should use the CVPR template (reviews are 
double-blind, so please hide author data in the pdf) and be submitted to 
the CMT site (linked above). Submissions must contain novel work and 
will be indexed in IEEE Xplore/CVF. They will receive at least two 
double-blind reviews.


*Important dates*

- Paper submission deadline: March 16, 2026.
- Notification to authors: April 6, 2026.
- Camera-ready deadline: April 8, 2026 (hard deadline on April 11).
- Workshop date: TBC (June 3 or 4, 2026).


*Organizers*

- Fabio Bellavia, University of Palermo
- Jiri Matas, Czech Technical University in Prague
- Dmytro Mishkin, Czech Technical University in Prague/HOVER Inc.
- Luca Morelli, University of Trento/Bruno Kessler Foundation
- Fabio Remondino, Bruno Kessler Foundation
- Amy Tabb, USDA-ARS-AFRS
- Eduard Trulls, Google
- Kwang Moo Yi, University of British Columbia


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