We are pleased to open the call for proposals for hosting challenge problems for the WSDM Cup 2027, a high-impact ML/AI competition event co-located with the WSDM 2027 main conference.

Competitions of this form are a crucial part of the research ecosystem, bringing together world-class experts from around the world to independently evaluate their best ideas on important problems. Past experience has shown this process to generate remarkable progress on specific challenges while achieving a depth of validation that lives up to the highest ideals of empirical rigor for AI and ML as research fields.

We are seeking proposals for challenge problems and datasets from both industrial and academic institutions, with an emphasis on novel challenges that address the most topical and pressing issues facing the WSDM community today.

We are particularly interested in — but do not limit our attention to — tasks that leverage new insights and solutions aided by Generative AI and emerging agentic systems. Much like many similar shared tasks, we view these challenges as competitions that allow academic and industry practitioners to come together to explore interesting problems and discuss successes, challenges, and future directions. Past WSDM Cup tasks have provided new datasets and evaluation methodologies, and have introduced important tasks to audiences who may have been previously unfamiliar with them.

We strongly encourage all interested institutions and research groups to submit proposals and be part of this important challenge. Hosting a challenge is a fantastic way to bring a strong spotlight to under-studied areas or emerging topics, to showcase expertise, to establish new benchmarks, and to contribute to advancing the field on real-world problems. The winning proposal for the WSDM Cup Challenge will be an archival submission included in a companion volume for WSDM workshops.