Report on the 1st Workshop on Conversational Search for Complex Information Needs (CoSCIN'26) at ECIR 2026

Abstract

We present the insights gathered at the 1st Workshop on Conversational Search for Complex Information Needs (CoSCIN'26) held on 2 April 2026, in conjunction with the Forty-eighth European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR). The workshop brought together keynote presenters and industry representatives for lively discussions on recent developments in conversational search and its future directions, complemented by Q&A sessions for paper presentations. The rapid developments in conversational search enabled interesting discussions that went beyond generative dialogue and factoid question-answering tasks, towards addressing complex information needs and improving the user experience by providing personalized, adaptive answers to users based on style. Moreover, the work that was presented supported exploratory, multi-step information needs and addressed challenges such as longform answer generation, personalization, agent orchestration, and societal considerations, which remain largely open areas of research. The participants shared their views from diverse backgrounds in information retrieval, natural language processing, and human-computer interaction, exchanged results and prospective ideas around conversational AI, and discussed its impact on users and the need for adaptivity. Through these discussions, the workshop fostered collaboration and connected researchers specializing in diverse facets of the topic, ultimately advancing the field toward creating more user-centric, intentionally designed, responsible conversational systems. Date: 2 April 2026. Website: https://convsearch-complex-info-needs.github.io/.