DialectSentEval 2026: Arabic Dialect Sentiment Analysis and Swapping Shared Task
Hosted with Arabic Natural Language Processing Conference (ArabicNLP 2026)
1. Overview
DialectSentEval is a shared task on Sentiment Analysis and Swapping in Arabic Dialects, comprising two subtasks:
- Subtask 1: Arabic Dialect Sentiment Analysis — multi-class classification across 5 dialects
- Subtask 2: Arabic Sentiment Swap — generative task inverting sentiment polarity while preserving meaning
2. Task Description
Subtask 1: Arabic Dialect Sentiment Analysis
- Input: Arabic sentence in a specific dialect
- Output: {positive, negative, neutral}
- Dataset: MDS-3 (3,000 sentences, 5 dialects: Moroccan, Egyptian, Lebanese, Jordanian, Saudi)
- Primary Metric: Macro F1-Score
Subtask 2: Arabic Sentiment Swap
- Input: Arabic sentence + source polarity
- Output: Same meaning, opposite polarity
- Dataset: MA’AKS Extended (9,647 pairs, 4 dialect groups)
- Metrics: Sentiment Accuracy + BERTScore + Perplexity
3. Tentative Timeline
- May 16, 2026: Release of training/dev data and evaluation scripts
- July 20, 2026: Registration deadline and release of test data
- July 27, 2026: End of evaluation cycle
- July 30, 2026: Final results released
- August 22, 2026: System description papers due
- October 24–29, 2026: ArabicNLP 2026 / EMNLP 2026, Budapest, Hungary
4. Organizers’ Details
- Saad Ezzini, KFUPM, KSA — saad.ezzini@kfupm.edu.sa
- Shadi Abudalfa, KFUPM, KSA — shadi.abudalfa@kfupm.edu.sa
- Maram Alharbi, Lancaster University, UK — maramalharbi987@gmail.com
- Salmane Chafik, UM6P, Morocco — Chafik.SALMANE@um6p.ma
- Hind Alatawi, KFUPM, KSA — g202301350@kfupm.edu.sa
- Mo El-Haj, VinUniversity / Lancaster University — elhaj.m@vinuni.edu.vn
- Ahmed Abdelali, HUMAIN, KSA — aabdelali@humain.com
- Osamah Alnahari, KFUPM, KSA — s202183290@kfupm.edu.sa
5. Participation Guidelines
- 📋 Register here: DialectSentEval 2026 Registration Form
- For participation guidelines, see Participation Guidelines.
- For paper submission, see Paper Submission Guidelines.
Logistics and Support
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Website: GitHub Pages Submission: Codabench
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