Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) are interactive characters that exhibit human-like qualities including communicating using natural human modalities such as facial expressions, speech, and gestures. They are capable of real-time perception, cognition, emotion and action that allow them to participate in dynamic social environments.
The IVA community aspires to advance the scientific understanding and engineering of IVAs through rigorous interdisciplinary research, spanning theory development, model and system design, novel applications, and rigorous empirical studies of human-agent interaction. We envision a future in which IVAs serve as natural, adaptive, and socially competent interfaces between humans and digital systems.
We organize the ACM international conference series on Intelligent Virtual Agents to showcase the latest work and trends on IVAs. It is an annual international event for interdisciplinary research on the design, application, and evaluation of IVAs with a specific focus on the ability to socially interact.
The conference aims to foster a scholarly community dedicated to exploring foundational theories, computational models, and empirical methods that drive innovation in agent design, human-agent interaction, and real-world deployment across diverse domains.
While the conference series traditionally uses the term IVAs, there is research and development on the topic under different technical terms such as embodied conversational agents, socially interactive agents, virtual humans, embodied AI and many others.
If you want to receive information from the IVA community, please subscribe to our international mailing list.
Actual Conference:
IVA 2026 will take place in Puebla, Mexico, from Sept. 7 to Sept. 11. Look forward to this amazing experience!
Former Conferences:
2025: Berlin, Germany
2024: Glasgow, United Kingdom
2023: Würzburg, Germany
2022: Faro, Portugal
2021: Fikuchiyama, Japan (virtual event)
2020: Glasgow, Scotland (virtual event)
2019: Paris, France
2018: Sydney, Australia
2017: Stockholm, Sweden
2016: Los Angeles, USA
2015: Delft, Netherlands
2014: Boston, USA
2013: Edinburgh, Scotland
2012: Santa Cruz, USA
2011: Reykjavik, Iceland
2010: Philadelphia, USA
2009: Amsterdam, Netherlands
2008: Tokyo, Japan
2007: Paris, France
2006: Marina del Rey, USA
2005: Kos, Greece
2003: Kloster Irsee, Germany
2001: Madrid, Spain
1999: Salford, England
1998: Salford, England
Steering Committee:
The mission of the Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA) Steering Committee is to guide the long-term development and strategic direction of the IVA conference series. We are committed to fostering a vibrant, inclusive, and interdisciplinary research community that advances the science and application of intelligent virtual agents.
Contact: steeringcommittee@iva.acm.org
Chairpersons:
Catherine Pelachaud, CNRS, Sorbonne University, France
Hannes Högni Vilhjálmsson, Reykjavik University, Iceland
Members:
Elisabeth André, Augsburg University, Germany
Ruth Aylett, Herriot Watt University, United Kingdom
Timothy Bickmore, Northeastern University, United States
Joost Broekens, Leiden University, Netherlands
Jonathan Gratch, Institute of Creative Technologies, United States
Dirk Heylen, Twente University, Netherlands
Hung-Hsuan Huang, University of Fukuchiyama, Japan
Rachael Jack, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom
Stefan Kopp, Bielefeld University, Germany
Birgit Lugrin, University of Würzburg, Germany
Stacy Marsella, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom
Michael Neff, University of California, Davis, United States
Florian Pecune, Bordeaux University, France
Deborah Richards, Macquarie University, Australia
Zerrin Yumak, Utrecht University, Netherlands
