Virtual Embryo Challenge timeline
- NeurIPS 2026 competitions announced
The competition track publishes its accepted list. Nothing is open yet: the site, the portal and the board follow a fortnight later.
- P1Site and submission portal live; validation leaderboard opens
Everything opens at once: the site, the submission portal, and the validation leaderboard. Submissions for the validation split are scored and ranked from the first day: the validation answers themselves are not distributed, a submission comes back as a score. The daily submission quota is loosest here, while entrants are wiring their pipelines up.
- P2Starter kit and reference baselines released
Data loaders, the exact metric implementations, reference baselines, example submissions and executed tutorials: the public baselines repo is the reference implementation. This is the point where there is a published number to beat, and the daily quota tightens to match.
- P3P3 opens at 09:00 Los Angeles time; P2 standings freeze
At 09:00 PDT (16:00 UTC), the default leaderboard switches to Test and Frozen P2 preserves results scored before this cutoff. During P3, eligible participants can explicitly request the P2 validation answers for model development. Receiving access or submitting a first final P3 entry permanently stops further P2 submissions: for the entire ordinary team, or the individual Yukon member. Access does not consume a P3 attempt. The live Validation leaderboard remains separate from the immutable Frozen P2 standings captured at the P3 opening cutoff. Hidden test ground truth is never distributed. Up to two final submissions per available board are allowed for the entire P3 phase.
- Final submissions due
The last moment a submission can be made or a final entry nominated. Nothing after this counts, in either track.
- Final evaluationOfficial evaluation starts
Scoring runs on the hidden test sets across both tracks, and Agent Team entries are checked against the evidence attached to them.
- Winners announced at NeurIPS
Final rankings use the hidden test set, not the development leaderboard.
This page is the authoritative schedule and is updated whenever a date moves. A deadline may be extended; one is never brought forward without notice. Datasets and exact metric formulations can still be corrected. the evaluation page tracks the metric panel as it stands today.