OFC 2026 ML Challenge
In recent years, machine learning (ML) has proven to be a transformative tool in modeling and understanding complex real-world data and systems. Its applications have revolutionized fields such as natural language processing, image processing, and radio frequency (RF) systems. In addition to contributions from industry and academia, the scientific advances in these fields have also been driven in part by challenges organized by the broader community, leveraging large-scale datasets such as MNIST, ImageNet, and RF signal classification. Recent breakthroughs have also shown the potential of using ML to improve modeling, performance prediction, and resource provisioning in optical networks across various scales. However, despite the growing number of works, the field still lacks, to the best of our knowledge, universal benchmarks with structured datasets to guide the community in pushing forward the frontier in this research direction.
We are proud to anounce the first OFC 2026 ML Challenge. For more information including objectives, timeline, prizes, materials, and submission instructions, please visit the ML Challenge page.
Deadline
The submission deadline of the OFC’26 ML Challenge will be Jan. 30, 2026
Related Events
Looking for more opportunities to contribute to the optical networking community? Check out these related events and resources!
Share your datasets, help build universal benchmarks, and be part of the inaugural dataset submission at OFC 2026. Learn more about submission categories, deadlines, and recognition opportunities on the official event page.