Nominations for the 2027 ACM SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award close on 5 December 2026. The autonomous agents award goes to a researcher whose current work is an important influence on the field, and the winner will be announced on 1 February 2027.
The recipient receives a monetary prize and a certificate. The winner is also invited to give a plenary talk at the AAMAS 2027 conference. The size of the prize has not been stated.
What the award recognises
The award is made for excellence in research in the area of autonomous agents. Its stated purpose is to recognise researchers whose current work is an important influence on the field. That wording points to present impact rather than a record built up over a whole career.
It is an official ACM award. The money behind it comes from an endowment that ACM SIGAI created from the proceeds of previous Autonomous Agents conferences. In practice, the research community's own conference revenue pays for the recognition it gives to its members.
The talk is part of the prize. AAMAS 2027 will run from 3 to 7 May 2027 in Hanoi, Vietnam. The winner is invited to present a plenary there, which puts their work in front of the full conference audience rather than a single track.
How nominations work
Anyone can make a nomination. Nominators submit a Google form containing a statement of less than one page. The statement has two jobs. It must describe the research contributions that merit the award, and it must explain how the individual's current work is an important influence on the field.
The organisers stress one rule. A candidate can only be considered if they are explicitly nominated. The call tells readers who believe someone deserves the award to nominate that person and not to assume someone else will.
The length limit puts the weight on the quality of the argument. A nominator has to be selective about which contributions to cite and has to connect them to present-day influence. A list of past achievements will not meet the criterion on its own.
Dates and contacts
Three dates frame the process. Nominations are due on 5 December 2026. The winner will be announced on 1 February 2027. The AAMAS 2027 conference then takes place from 3 to 7 May 2027 in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Questions go to Sven Koenig, who is the Award Chair, or to Louise Dennis, the SIGAI Vice Chair.
Analysis: what this award shows and what it leaves open
The structure of this award says something about how the autonomous agents community sees itself. The field has its own conference series, and that series has produced enough surplus to fund an endowment. An endowed ACM award is a durable institution. It does not depend on a single year's sponsor, and it ties recognition to the community's own venue.
The emphasis on current work is the most distinctive part of the criteria. A prize that rewards present influence will tend to favour researchers whose ideas are shaping what others are working on now. It need not go to the person with the longest record. Whether it works that way depends on how the nominations are judged, and the call does not describe the judging process.
The self-nomination-by-others model has a limit. Because only explicitly nominated candidates are considered, the pool reflects who gets noticed and who has colleagues willing to write a statement. Researchers with strong work but few advocates may never enter the pool. The open invitation to anyone lowers that barrier, but it does not remove it. The one-page limit helps, since it keeps the cost of nominating low.
Several things remain unknown. The call does not state the prize amount. It does not name the selection committee or describe how nominations are scored. It does not list previous recipients. Without those details, it is not possible to say how the award compares with other honours in artificial intelligence, or how closely past winners have matched the current-influence criterion. Any claim about its standing relative to other prizes would go beyond the facts available.
What can be said is narrower. For researchers working on autonomous agents, this award offers a defined route to recognition and a plenary slot at a major conference in the field. The route is open to any nominator and has a fixed deadline. The practical point for anyone considering a nomination is the 5 December 2026 cutoff.