Arabic
Modern Standard Arabic, Classical Arabic, regional dialects, code-switching, historical varieties and domain-specific Arabic.
The 3rd Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script
AbjadNLP 2027
Advancing language technologies for Arabic, Perso-Arabic and Ajami writing traditions across Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
About AbjadNLP
One workshop, a much wider Arabic-script world
AbjadNLP brings together researchers working on Arabic and the wider family of languages written in Arabic-derived scripts, spanning Abjad and Ajami traditions.
Following the first workshop in Abu Dhabi and the second edition at EACL 2026 in Rabat, AbjadNLP returns for its third edition in Macau. The workshop creates a common research space for languages that share script traditions but differ substantially in morphology, orthography, sociolinguistic context, resource availability and digital representation.
The workshop places particular emphasis on low-resource and under-represented languages, open resources, reproducible research, shared evaluation, and collaboration between established NLP communities and researchers working on languages that remain poorly served by current language technologies.
3rd
edition of the Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script
71
papers published in the AbjadNLP 2026 proceedings
90+
submissions received by the 2026 edition in Rabat
4
shared tasks in the previous edition, expanding community benchmarking
Languages and writing traditions
Beyond Arabic alone
The workshop welcomes research across the linguistic and cultural breadth of Arabic-derived scripts.
Perso-Arabic languages
Persian, Urdu, Pashto, Sorani Kurdish, Azeri, Ottoman Turkish, Sindhi, Uyghur and other languages using Arabic-derived scripts.
Ajami traditions
Hausa, Fula, Wolofal, Swahili, Kanuri, Mandingo, Tamazight and other African languages represented through Ajami writing traditions.
Workshop history
Building an enduring research community
2025Abu Dhabi
1st AbjadNLP Workshop
Launched at COLING 2025, establishing a dedicated venue for NLP research across Arabic-script languages.
View 2025 proceedings2026Rabat
2nd AbjadNLP Workshop
Held with EACL 2026 in Rabat, expanding to 71 published papers and a substantial shared-task programme.
View 2026 proceedingsTopics of interest
Research across the full NLP stack
We invite original work on methods, resources, evaluation and applications for languages written in Arabic-derived scripts.
Core NLP
Morphology, tokenisation, tagging, parsing, NER, sentiment and language modelling.
LLMs & Generative AI
Multilingual LLMs, adaptation, prompting, evaluation, safety and low-resource generation.
Applications
MT, speech, OCR, handwriting recognition, QA, dialogue and social media analysis.
Resources
Corpora, lexicons, datasets, benchmarks, orthography documentation and open tools.
Fairness & Evaluation
Bias, ethics, safety, cultural awareness, robustness and responsible evaluation.
Code-switching
Dialect mixing, transliteration, script variation and multilingual interaction.
Culture & Heritage
Digital humanities, literary NLP, language preservation and historical text processing.
Domain NLP
Education, healthcare, finance, legal, government and other real-world domains.
Community NLP
Participatory data creation, grassroots collaborations and sustainable capacity building.
Multimodality
Text with image, document, audio and speech signals for Arabic-script communities.
Shared Tasks at AbjadNLP 2027
Benchmarks for Arabic-script NLP
The shared-task programme encourages comparable evaluation, reusable datasets and deeper collaboration across Arabic and other Abjad languages.
Keynote
Keynote speaker
Prof. Steven Bird, Charles Darwin University, Australia
The talk details will be announced here once confirmed.
Call for Papers
Submission and publication
AbjadNLP 2027 will follow COLING 2027 standards for formatting, peer review and ethical guidelines.
Submission guidelines
Submissions must be anonymised for double-blind review and use the official ACL style files. Authors may submit directly to the workshop or commit eligible pre-reviewed work through ACL Rolling Review within the workshop deadlines.
Long papersUp to 8 pages of main content, excluding references.
Short papersUp to 4 pages of main content, excluding references.
Review modelDouble-blind peer review with full anonymisation.
PublicationAccepted papers will appear in the COLING 2027 workshop proceedings on the ACL Anthology.
COLING 2027 paper guidelines ACL style files
Submission portal: to be announced. The ARR commitment deadline and exact workshop day will be announced here. Please read the author policy and the workshop policies before submitting.
Policies and responsibilities
Guidance for authors and organisers
Read the policy relevant to your participation. Organisers should also review the responsibilities assigned to each role.
For authors
Author policy
Submission routes, paper formatting, research ethics, peer review and publication requirements.
Read the author policy For the programme committee and organisersCommittee and organiser policy
Committee responsibilities, reviewing standards, professional conduct and workshop procedures.
Read the workshop policy Understand your roleOrganiser roles and responsibilities
What each chair and organising team is responsible for, and what they are expected to deliver.
Explore organiser rolesPeople
Organising committee
AbjadNLP is organised by an international team spanning multilingual NLP, low-resource language technology, corpus linguistics, language resources and applied AI.
Organiser roles and responsibilitiesCommittee and organiser policy
General Chair
General Chair
Dr Mo El-Haj
VinUniversity, Vietnam
Lancaster University, UK
Programme Chairs
Programme Chair
Prof. Paul Rayson
Director, UCREL Research Centre
Lancaster University, UK
Programme Chair
Dr Ignatius Ezeani
Lancaster University, UK
Programme Chair
Dr Saad Ezzini
KFUPM, Saudi Arabia
Publicity Chairs
Publicity Chair
Dr Amal Haddad Haddad
University of Granada, Spain
Publicity Chair
Ms Cynthia Amol
Maseno University, Kenya
Publication Chairs
Publication Chair
Dr Noura El Moussa
KFUPM
Publication Chair
Ms Ghada Alshahrani
Lancaster University, UK
Shared-Task Chairs
Shared-Task Chair
Dr Ahmad Abdelali
Humain, Saudi Arabia
Shared-Task Chair
Dr Shadi Abudalfa
Onaizah Colleges, Saudi Arabia
Advisory Committee
Prof. Nizar Habash
New York University Abu Dhabi, UAE
Prof. Ruslan Mitkov
Lancaster University, UK
Programme Committee to be confirmed
Abdelbasset DjamaiDatategy & NAMAA Community, Algeria
Abderrahim El YessefiFST Tangier, Morocco
Abdullah I. AlharbiKing Salman Global Academy for Arabic, Saudi Arabia
Ahmed AbdelaliHamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar
Ali Al-LaithUniversity of Copenhagen, Denmark
Alp OktemCollectivaT, Spain
Azizud DinUniversity Malaysia Sarawak, Malaysia
Balaji NagarajanLowe’s, United States
Btissam Er-RahmadiHuawei Technologies R&D, UK
Djamel MostefaSYSTRA Group, France
Doaa SamyCairo University, Egypt
Fadi ZaraketUAB, Lebanon
Mohamad BalloutUAB, Lebanon
Fatima Ez-Zahraa BazayMohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco
Haithem AfliADAPT Centre, Ireland
Hessa AlawwadImam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Saudi Arabia
Houda AnounHassan II University of Casablanca, Morocco
Ignatius EzeaniLancaster University, UK
Imed ZitouniMeta, United States
Khloud Al JalladSyrian Society for Startups and Research
Latifa Iben NasrUniversity of Sfax, Tunisia
Manish AdawadkarNike, United States
Muhammad AdeelUniversity of Management and Technology, Pakistan
Muhammad SharjeelCOMSATS University Islamabad, Pakistan
Nadia GhezaielUniversity of Ha’il, Saudi Arabia
Najwa AlghamdiUniversity of Edinburgh, UK
Niranjan Kumar MLowe’s, United States
Noor Abo MokhMBZUAI, UAE
Paul RaysonLancaster University, UK
Pranav GuptaCisco, United States
Passant ElchafeiUlm University, Germany
Rania Azad M. San AhmedSulaimani Polytechnic University, Iraq
Raziullah KhanHCL Technologies, United States
Reham MarzoukMBZUAI, UAE
Saad EzziniKFUPM, Saudi Arabia
Sadam Al-AzaniKFUPM, Saudi Arabia
Samira EllouzeUniversity of Sfax, Tunisia
Shadi AbudalfaOnaizah Colleges, Saudi Arabia
Shervin MalmasiMacquarie University, Australia
Sina AhmadiUniversity of Zurich, Switzerland
Salim Al MandhariLancaster University, UK
Satyam RajArizona State University, United States
Serry SibaeePrince Sultan University, Saudi Arabia
Seyed Arad Ashrafi AsliMIRAS Technologies, Iran
Yamina Leyla MoussaouiC.R.S.T.D.L.A, Algeria
Diversity, inclusion and community
AbjadNLP is committed to supporting under-represented languages, researchers and communities in NLP. The workshop’s scope naturally spans substantial linguistic, cultural and regional diversity across Africa, the Middle East and Asia, and we welcome work that broadens participation, strengthens open and inclusive NLP ecosystems, and creates sustainable research capacity for low-resource and minority languages.