The European Summer School on Artificial Intelligence (ESSAI) is the annual summer school of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI).

It is Europe's largest summer school covering the breadth of AI, offering courses across a wide range of AI topics and perspectives. ESSAI serves as a central meeting place for students and early-career researchers in AI to discuss current research and share knowledge. Further information on ESSAI

The fifth edition of ESSAI will be held at the University of Calabria, in Rende, Cosenza, Italy, on 1st–8 September 2027. ESSAI 2027 website

We invite leading AI researchers to submit proposals for courses to be offered at the school. Submissions will open in November 2026. Detailed information about the submission requirements, deadlines, and submission procedure will be published on the ESSAI website.

ESSAI aims to cover a broad range of AI subdisciplines and their interactions. Course proposals are invited in all areas of AI, including but not limited to:

• Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems (MAS)
• Causality and Causal Learning (CL)
• Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects of AI (ELS)
• Foundation Models (FM)
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR)
• Learning Theory (LT)
• Natural Language Processing (NLP)
• Neuro-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning (NSLR)
• Planning and Strategic Reasoning (PLAN)
• Reinforcement Learning (RL)
• Robotics (ROB)
• Safe, Explainable and Trustworthy AI (SET)
• Search and Optimisation (SO)
• Supervised and Unsupervised Learning (ML)
• Vision (VIS)
• Human-in-the-Loop AI (HLAI)
• AI for Social Good (A4SG)
• Quantum Machine Learning (QML)

COURSE FORMAT AND PROPOSALS
Each course will consist of 6 slots of 1 hour each delivered over 3 days.
Courses are divided into two categories: Introductory and Advanced. Each proposal must explicitly indicate whether the course is Introductory or Advanced.

• Introductory courses will typically focus on a single subarea of AI. Introductory courses should specify the intended level, for example by referring to standard textbooks or monographs in the relevant area.
• Advanced courses are encouraged to adopt a broader perspective, highlighting connections between different areas of AI and appealing to researchers beyond a single subdiscipline. Advanced courses should clearly describe the required prerequisites.

Course proposals will be reviewed by a Programme Committee representing the research areas listed above. The committee will select the courses to be offered at the school. Proposals must be submitted by the proposed lecturers, typically one or two established and internationally recognised AI researchers. Proposals involving more than two lecturers must include a justification.

PARTICIPATION
All lecturers named in a proposal must teach in person at the school. To keep registration fees as low as possible and enable more students to participate, all teaching and organisational work for ESSAI is undertaken on a voluntary basis. Registration fees will be waived for all lecturers. Where appropriate and subject to available resources, ESSAI will endeavour to provide partial reimbursement of travel and accommodation expenses. Such support can typically be offered to only one lecturer per course. Lecturers who can cover their travel and accommodation expenses through other sources are strongly encouraged to do so.

ESSAI 2027 LOCAL ORGANISERS
Francesco Ricca, University of Calabria
Giuseppe Mazzotta, University of Calabria
ESSAI STEERING COMMITTEE
Giuseppe De Giacomo, University of Oxford, EurAI Board
Vida Groznik, University of Ljubljana, EurAI Board
Brian Logan, University of Aberdeen and Utrecht University
Magdalena Ortiz, TU Wien