Can your EEG or EMG model still work when the person, recording session, or stimulus changes?
That is what we are testing in the EEG/EMG Foundation Challenge 2026. Registration is open now, with four tracks and a $20,000 cash prize pool, plus internship opportunities.
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Pick the problem you want to work on:**
- Track 1 — EEG-to-Image: identify images from brain activity (guide · Codabench)
- Track 2 — BCI decoding: decode mental commands across recording sessions (guide · Codabench)
- Track 3 — Sleep onset: estimate time to sleep onset in unseen participants (guide · Codabench)
- Track 4 — EMG-to-Pose: predict hand pose from muscle signals (guide · Codabench)
The common thread across all four is generalization: every track holds out something at evaluation time, unseen subjects, unseen sessions, or unseen stimuli, so a model that only memorizes a recording setup will not transfer.
Last year, 1,197 teams from more than 50 countries joined the EEG Foundation Challenge. This year we are expanding to EMG and to new generalization tasks.
Timeline
- Registration: open now
- Submissions open: 21 September 2026
- Warm-up phase: through 25 October 2026
- Final evaluation on hidden data: until 21 November 2026
- Winners celebrated at the NeurIPS Brain & Body Workshop, Sydney, 11–12 December 2026
You can enter one track or all four. NeuralBench already ships public starter data, guides, and baselines, so you can have a pipeline running before submissions open.
Register and compare the tracks: Register | EEG/EMG Foundation Challenge 2026
Discord: neural-interface
Thanks to the track teams and to our prize sponsors, Meta, Muse by Interaxon, and Yneuro, for making this possible. Happy to answer questions about data, baselines, or evaluation in this thread.