Submission Deadline: 22 June 2026
This year’s ICIDS (International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling) will return to Southeast Asia, having last been hosted in the region in Singapore in 2014. The hosting city is Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, a country with a rich history as a cultural crossroads, where diverse traditions from across its varied landscapes have intertwined to create a complex and non-homogeneous society.
This heritage is defined by a spirit of resilience and a remarkable capacity for adaptation, drawn from a pluralistic tapestry of regional identities and localized wisdoms found throughout the kingdom. Such inherent creativity permeates all levels of Thai life, ranging from resourceful everyday practices to thriving creative industries. This reflects a culture that seamlessly blends deep-rooted tradition with contemporary innovation.
Today, Thailand’s rapid digital transformation is driven by one of the most digitally active populations in the world, who are eagerly re-envisioning their narrative heritage through emerging technologies. This dynamic environment, where the physical and the digital constantly intersect, provides a compelling backdrop for our gathering. We are happy to be able to host the conference in such a place, and we are certain that its rich tapestry of the past, the present, and the future will enrich how we look at IDN during the conference.
In the spirit of the multicultural diversity and the rich, vibrant, and ever-changing “flux” and flexible site of Thailand, our host for ICIDS 2026, the theme for this year’s conference is “adapt/abilities”. To be adaptable is to be inherently willing to change, to modify, and to acclimate to fluid conditions–that is, conditions of selfhood, nationalities, politics, borders, cultures, natures, rituals, tools, and more.
Adaptability is the powerful art of survival in ever-changing world conditions and their attendant micro and macro ecosystems. But the ability to adapt can also be a subtle and secretive form of defense and/as offense, a way to artfully, gracefully manage and mitigate oppressive counterforces and threats while maintaining novel and innovative identities and states of being. The varied forms of adapt/abilities, then, can be a range of systems and modes to support beautiful endurance and to move progressively, powerfully, forward in a world of multiplicitous flux and innovation…
We ask our authors then to consider the ways that IDN’s too are the result of adapt/abilities, the ways in the past, present and future that we can identify both the threats and the modes of survival for IDNs in a fluid, flexible, multiplicitous world. How, and from where, have IDNs innovated and endured? How have they acclimated to new forces for change? And what is at the heart of the threats and the kinds of resistance they have inspired? Who are the antagonists, and how do we recognise them? In what ecosystems (technical, cultural, narrative, social) have IDNs been engaged, and how have they adapted, not only to survive but to overcome, to win? And how are IDNs themselves, by their very nature, inherently adaptable?
We encourage contributions that focus on this theme, but we also emphasize that there is no requirement for papers or workshops to reflect the theme, either implicitly or explicitly—it is meant only as inspiration and is not intended to impose a constraint on other possible contributions and topics relevant to the field of Interactive Digital Storytelling.
Please review the following areas of interest and descriptions of types of contributions for more consideration:
Paper submissions are invited into one of the main conference areas listed below.
Papers exploring fundamental, theoretical aspects of interactive digital storytelling, narrative structures, interactivity, to foster the conceptual underpinnings of IDNs. In this context, the placement of theory in a historic context is also appreciated.
Research on frameworks, procedures, and pipelines that support a common understanding of the analysis of the principles of methods, rules, and postulates employed or to be employed in the field, in the best case as a standard. This area welcomes papers on innovative tools, methodologies (i.e. for validation or replication studies), and technical frameworks for creating IDNs.
Explorations of interactive digital storytelling in practice, including educational applications, collaborative narrative experiences, virtual worlds, games, and performances. This area examines the implementation of interactive narratives across various media and contexts, with attention to audience engagement and practical outcomes.
Analysis of sociocultural implications and ethical dimensions of interactive digital storytelling, including representation, accessibility, cultural context, power dynamics, and authorship issues. This area welcomes papers that critically examine the impact of interactive narratives and question underlying assumptions about story creation and reception of IDNs.
Papers may be either long or short but must present interesting and novel work at all stages of completion. The appropriate length should be determined by the author(s) to best represent the material they choose to foreground.
All papers may contain images and/or figures. However, note that any images or figures not produced by the authors will require copyright clearance.
Full papers (4000-6000 words, excluding references, to be published in the proceedings).
Short papers (2000-4000 words, excluding references, to be published in the proceedings).
Late Breaking Work (2000-3000 words, excluding references, to be published in the proceedings) describing works in progress, working, presentable systems, or brief explanations of a research project.
Late Breaking Work will be presented at the conference in the form of a demo or poster session, not a full presentation, and should be selected if the full or short paper formats are unsuitable for representing the proposed research, due to their unfinished nature.
Note that additional instructions for authors will be made available soon.
Abstracts and references do not count toward the word limits.
ICIDS follows a strict double-peer review process. Please fully anonymize your paper. Non-anonymized papers will be desk-rejected.
Please note that papers must be written in English, and only electronic submissions in PDF format will be considered for review.
Publication is conditional on a minimum of one author registering for the conference to present the work to the community. Successful submissions will be included as part of the conference proceedings published by Springer.
All submissions must follow the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) format, available at: https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs
Authors are also invited to refer to previous ICIDS conference proceedings for format, style, and inspiration: https://link.springer.com/conference/icids
The best experience of ICIDS is by attending in person, but this is a fully hybrid conference so remote attendance is possible if none of the authors of a paper can travel to the conference. In this case, publication of the contribution in the proceedings is conditional on registration and remote presentation (either live or as a pre-recorded video, depending on the final arrangements).
Remote participants need to be aware that the conference will take place on Indochina Time(GMT +7).
Submissions are accepted through Easychair via the SUBMIT button below.
NOTE: If you cannot decide which track covers your paper or you think it could be submitted to several tracks, then please submit to ICIDS (the first item of the list). Thanks
The following advertised conferences bearing the acronym ICIDS as well as the title “International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling” allegedly being organised in various locations around the world are in no way affiliated with ARDIN nor with this conference and are a blatant attempt to profit from our reputation.
Please note that any submissions to any of these conferences will NOT be considered for acceptance to ARDIN’s ICIDS conference simply because they will not be received by us for consideration.