Computer science has hundreds of conferences. A handful define the field in each subarea — setting research agendas, launching careers, and establishing what "state of the art" means. This guide maps the most important venues by subfield, with notes on selectivity and what to expect.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
- NeurIPS (Neural Information Processing Systems) — Acceptance rate ~25%; the largest AI conference by attendance; strong in deep learning, probabilistic methods, and theory
- ICML (International Conference on Machine Learning) — Acceptance rate ~20–25%; focus on algorithms and learning theory
- ICLR (International Conference on Learning Representations) — Fully open review via OpenReview; strong community culture; acceptance ~30% (top 1–2% receive oral presentations)
- AAAI — Broader AI scope including planning, knowledge representation, and applied AI; acceptance rate ~20%
Tip: In ML/AI, arXiv preprints are expected. Post your paper on arXiv the day you submit to the conference — this is standard practice, not a breach of anonymity rules (check the specific conference policy).
Computer Vision
- CVPR (IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition) — The flagship venue; acceptance ~25%; enormous programme with workshops and tutorials
- ICCV (International Conference on Computer Vision) — Held every two years; slightly more selective than CVPR
- ECCV (European Conference on Computer Vision) — Held in alternating years with ICCV; strong European community; acceptance ~27%
Natural Language Processing
- ACL (Association for Computational Linguistics Annual Meeting) — The flagship NLP venue; acceptance ~20%
- EMNLP (Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing) — Strong on empirical and applied NLP; acceptance ~20–25%
- NAACL (North American Chapter of ACL) — Regional but globally competitive; acceptance ~20%
Systems and Architecture
- SOSP (Symposium on Operating Systems Principles) — The most prestigious OS conference; held every two years; extremely selective (<15%)
- OSDI (USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation) — Alternates years with SOSP; similar prestige and selectivity
- ISCA (International Symposium on Computer Architecture) — Premier architecture venue; acceptance ~15–18%
- MICRO, HPCA — Secondary tiers in architecture, highly regarded within the community
Networking
- SIGCOMM — ACM's flagship networking conference; acceptance ~12–15%; highly competitive
- NSDI (Networked Systems Design and Implementation) — USENIX venue; strong industry-research crossover
- IMC (Internet Measurement Conference) — Focus on empirical measurement of Internet infrastructure; acceptance ~25%
Security and Privacy
- IEEE S&P (Oakland) — One of the "Big Four" security conferences; acceptance ~15%
- CCS (ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security) — Broad security scope; acceptance ~15–18%
- USENIX Security — Four submission cycles per year; strong on systems security; acceptance ~15%
- NDSS (Network and Distributed System Security) — Fourth of the Big Four; acceptance ~20%
Software Engineering and Programming Languages
- ICSE (International Conference on Software Engineering) — The flagship SE venue; acceptance ~20%
- FSE/ESEC — Joint European Software Engineering Conference and ACM Symposium; strong on empirical SE
- PLDI (Programming Language Design and Implementation) — The top PL venue for implementation work
- POPL (Principles of Programming Languages) — Theory-focused; extremely selective (<20%)
Databases
- VLDB — Rolling 12-month submission window; the most accessible top-tier DB venue in terms of timeline
- SIGMOD — ACM's flagship database conference; acceptance ~15–18%
- ICDE (International Conference on Data Engineering) — IEEE's main DB conference; slightly broader scope
Ranking Resources
For a ranked view of CS venues, consult:
- CORE Rankings (core.edu.au) — A*, A, B, C tiers for CS conferences
- CSRankings.org — Ranks institutions by publications at top venues per subfield
- Google Scholar Metrics — h5-index for venues; updated annually
Use LatestConferences.com to track upcoming deadlines across all these subfields in one place.