8th International Summer School on Artificial Intelligence and Games

International Summer School on AI and Games 2026

The 8th International Summer School on Artificial Intelligence and Games will be held in Leiden, The Netherlands, 15-19 June 2026!

Join the leading global event dedicated to the intersection of AI and games! This summer school provides an intensive learning experience covering cutting-edge AI techniques in game playing, content generation, and player modelling delivered by leading experts from the games industry. This summer school offers an unparalleled deep dive into AI and Machine Learning for games. Whether you’re a student, researcher, or industry professional, this is your chance to explore the future of AI in gaming with world-class experts.

Designed for game developers, designers, programmers, and AI researchers, the program combines theoretical foundations with practical applications, including expert-led talks and tutorials and a Game AI Jam to apply your new skills.

Testimonials from Our Past Speakers & Participants

"I've had the huge privilege to attend twice, learnt more each time and met so many amazing people from across a huge range of global origins, career stages and overall awesomeness."

Sam Devlin
Principal Researcher (Games + AI)

"The Summer School is a fantastic event where students and experts alike engage in high-level discussions on AI in games. The mix of research and industry perspectives makes it truly unique."

Duygu Cakmak
R&D Director

"Few events offer this kind of direct interaction between students, researchers, and industry professionals. The Summer School on AI and Games is a must for anyone starting in the field."

Wesley Kerr
Head of Technology Research

"You'll find participants from top-tier research institutions to leading game studios, which makes it the best environment for finding collaborators, talent, and gaining an understanding where the entire industry is heading."

David Renaudie
Principal/Expert AI Scientist

"As an AI researcher and video games fan, the AI & Games summer school was an amazing experience to learn about the intersection of AI & Games."

Wafa Aissa
Postdoctoral Researcher

"It was an amazing opportunity for me to learn pioneering game AI techniques in academia and industry, and to make wonderful research connections with the most influential game AI researchers in the world"

Jaeyoung Moon
PhD Student

"Attending the AI & Games Summer School early in my PhD was an incredible experience—engaging, inspiring, and full of hands-on learning. It shaped my understanding of game AI and connected me with an amazing community."

Enrica Loria
Senior Game Analytics Engineer

Who should attend?

The Summer School is aimed at Graduate Students in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Games, HCI, and Computational Intelligence; Game Developers, Designers, and Programmers; and AI Researchers interested in applying AI to games.

What to Expect?

Engaging Lectures – Gain insights into the latest research and developments in AI for games, from reinforcement learning to generative AI.
Hands-on Workshops – Participate in interactive sessions where you will apply AI techniques to real-world gaming problems, guided by leading experts.
Networking Opportunities – Connect with peers, researchers, and industry professionals, forging relationships that could lead to future collaborations.
Game AI Jam – Put your knowledge into action by collaborating on creative AI-driven game projects in an exciting challenge.

Meet the Experts

The summer school is led by Georgios N. Yannakakis and Julian Togelius, co-authors of Artificial Intelligence and Games, the first comprehensive textbook on AI applications in gaming. They are joined by guest lecturers from the game industry, bringing diverse perspectives and cutting-edge insights into AI-driven game development.

Partners this Year

More partners will be announced soon...

Past Partners

Quantic Foundry stacked version full color

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Main Organizers

Georgios N. Yannakakis
Professor | IDG, University of Malta
Co-Founder | humanfeedback.ai

Georgios N. Yannakakis (yannakakis.net) is a Professor at the Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta and a Co-Founder and Director of humanfeedback.ai. He is a leading expert in the game artificial intelligence research field with core theoretical contributions in machine learning, evolutionary computation, affective computing and player modelling, computational creativity and procedural content generation. He has published more than 350 papers and his work has been cited broadly. He has attracted funding from several EU and national research agencies and received multiple awards for published work in top-tier journals and conferences. His work has been featured in New Scientist, Science Magazine, The Guardian, Le Monde and other venues. He is regularly invited to give keynote talks at the most recognised conferences in his areas of research activity and has organised a few of the most respected conferences in the areas of game AI and game research. He is the Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Games and the co-author of the Artificial Intelligence and Games Textbook. Georgios is an IEEE Fellow.

Julian Togelius
Professor | NYU Tandon
Advisory Board | Unity

Julian Togelius (julian.togelius.com) is a Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering and an Advisory board member at Unity. Previously, he was an Associate Professor at the Center for Computer Games Research, IT University of Copenhagen and among the founders of the procedural content generation research field. Togelius has introduced core procedural generation paradigms and frameworks for game content such as the Experience-driven Procedural Content Generation (EDPCG) framework and the Search-based Procedural Content Generation (SBPCG) paradigm which define two of the leading research trends within procedural content generation. EDPCG couples player experience modelling and procedural content generation so that game content is generated in a personalised manner for affecting the experience of the player and SBPCG offers a taxonomy for the generation of game content through search. He co-edited the first book on Procedural Content Generation in Games. Togelius' research has appeared in respected international media such as New Scientist, and Le Monde. He is the co-author of the Artificial Intelligence and Games Textbook. Julian is an IEEE Fellow.

David Melhart
Assistant Professor | SDU Metaverse Lab
Co-Founder | humanfeedback.ai

David Melhart is an Assistant Professor at the Metaverse Lab, University of Southern Denmark (SDU) and a Co-Founder and HCAI Lead of humanfeedback.ai. David is specialising in affective computing and games research. Before joining the SDU, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta. He has also worked as a Senior Platform Engineer and AI Researcher at modl.ai, a company dedicated to developing AI tools for human-like game testing. He was a keynote speaker and panelist at the 26th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence 2023 - Ethics of Game AI Workshop, Communication Chair of FDG 2020, Workshop and Panels Chair of FDG2023, Web Chair of IEEE CoG 2026, and has been a recurring co-organizer and chief coordinator of the Summer School series on Artificial Intelligence and Games. He currently serves as an Editorial Assistant to the IEEE Transactions on Games and an Associate Editor to the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing.

Guest Speakers

Wes Kerr
Head of Technology Research | Riot Games

Wesley Kerr is the Head of Technology Research at Riot Games, where he leads the company’s long-term AI strategy across Game AI, Next-Generation AI Games, and Foundational Models. He founded Riot’s first AI research center, advancing agents that learn to play games and forging collaborations with academia and industry. His current research spans embodied agents, reinforcement learning, and large language models, with projects like bots for first-person shooters and next-generation AI gameplay. Wesley holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Arizona and previously worked at Google Research on game search and discovery.

Haiyan Zhang
General Manager & Partner, Gaming AI | Microsoft

Haiyan Zhang is a designer, engineer and maker of things. Haiyan is General Manager & Partner, Gaming AI at Xbox, heading up Science efforts for Xbox platform’s consumer facing AI experiences, such as the Gaming Copilot. She was formerly Chief of Staff to the CEO of Microsoft Gaming from 2020 to 2022. And was Senior Director of Innovation at Microsoft Research Cambridge and Technical Advisor to Lab Director, Christopher Bishop. She has also served as an inventor and TV host on the BBC series, Big Life Fix, inventing cutting-edge technology in support of people and communities in need. She has worked with leading video game makers on research and ideas for new play experiences. Clients have included Mattel, Electronic Arts, HBO, Citibank, France Telecom, Alcatel, Cisco, and AT&T.

Stefán Freyr Guðmundsson
Director of Data, Analytics, and AI | CCP Games

Stefan is Director of Data, Analytics, and AI at CCP Games, where he leads the teams behind the data platforms, analytics capabilities, and applied AI efforts. With a background in mathematics and AI in games, he has spent more than a decade developing practical data and AI products, including player-modelling systems at King, data and AI solutions at Sidekick Health, and QA and player bots at modl.ai.

Ahmad Azadvar
Research Craft & Tools Lead | Activision Publishing

Ahmad Azadvar is a Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) scholar and User Research leader working at the intersection of game UX, applied AI/ML, and psychophysiology. He currently serves as Research Craft & Tools Lead at Activision Publishing, where he sets quantitative research and tools strategy and leads development of the Activision User Research Platform, an integrated suite of AI/ML-driven research tools (with UI for annotation, training, evaluation, and deployment) supporting researchers across Activision, Blizzard, and Xbox Research.

Ahmad has led multimodal research programs spanning usability, biometrics, and large-scale analytics, and has contributed to 65+ shipped titles, from indie projects to major AAA franchises.

Dafni Antotsiou
Senior Machine Learning Engineer | Sony Interactive Entertainment

Dafni Antotsiou is a Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Sony Interactive Entertainment, focusing on foundation models that enable reasoning in imitation-learning agents under real-time constraints. Her work focuses on vision-language modelling, prompt-efficient pipelines, and latency-constrained deployment. Previously, at Helsing, she led synthetic data generation using diffusion models and LoRA to boost detection performance from very limited real imagery. Dafni holds a PhD in Machine Learning from Imperial College London on data-efficient imitation learning for robotic manipulation, along with an MSc in Creative Technology from the University of Bristol and an MEng in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Carlos Celemin
Senior Machine Learning Engineer | Sony Interactive Entertainment

Carlos Celemin is a Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) in the Autonomous Agents team, where he works on creating intelligent agents that learn efficiently to perceive and interact with game worlds. Before joining SIE, he spent over 10 years working on decision-making and computer vision systems for controlling physical robots across several research labs in seven different countries, spanning undergraduate to postdoctoral research. He later moved into the game technology industry at Tencent, shifting from physical robots to game characters, and spent a few years in a team developing AI-based technologies for different stages of the game production process, with a primary focus on leading the autonomous game testing agents project.

Konrad Tollmar
Head of Research | SEED & Research Director | Electronic Arts

Dr. Konrad Tollmar is the Head of Research at SEED and Research Director at Electronic Arts. My interest is focused on innovative AI for interactive entertainment, encompassing computer vision, machine learning, computer graphics, and perception-based human-computer interfaces. Before EA, I was an Associate Professor at KTH, visiting Professor at TUB Telekom Innovation Laboratories: T-Labs, Associate Professor at Ingvar Kamprad Design Centre – Lund University, Research Scientist at MIT CSAIL, and Postdoc at MIT AI-Lab.

Jack Parker-Holder
Research Scientist | Google DeepMind

Jack is Research Scientist at Google DeepMind in the Open-Endedness Team and an Honorary Lecturer at University College London, where he is part of UCL DARK. He is interested in training world models from Internet scale data, providing unlimited training environments for embodied AGI.

Before joining Google DeepMind Jack was a DPhil student at St Peter's College, Oxford, where he was part of the Machine Learning Research Group, advised by Stephen Roberts.

Lizaveta Sakalova
Backend Engineer | Wargaming

Lizaveta Sakalova is a Backend Engineer at Wargaming working on AI Products for gameplay agents in the World of Tanks ecosystem. Her focus is on building and maintaining data pipelines that support the full machine learning lifecycle, from data ingestion and preprocessing to serving data for real-time inference. She works on preparing, validating, and versioning datasets for model training, as well as designing robust backend architectures that integrate AI components into production systems. A key part of her work involves automating data pipelines and delivering ready-to-use, well-tested solutions, with an emphasis on test coverage and reliability of data workflows and services.

Vladimir Ciric
Machine Learning Engineer | Wargaming

Vladimir Ciric is a Machine Learning Engineer at Wargaming working on applied AI for gameplay agents in the World of Tanks ecosystem. His work focuses on objective-driven agent behavior: selecting and prioritizing targets based on the active game mode, and routing agents to those objectives under real-time constraints. He is interested in combining optimization and planning methods with learning-based components to make agent behavior robust and human-like.

Piero Molino
CEO and co-founder | Studio Atletico

Piero Molino, PhD is CEO and co-founder of Studio Atelico, building on-device generative AI video games and technology. He has 15+ years of experience in AI, spanning research and production systems in machine learning, NLP, reinforcement learning, and computer vision. He previously co-founded Predibase (acquired by Rubrik in 2025) and was a founding member of Uber AI, where he worked on dialogue systems, recommender systems, and large-scale deployed ML. He is also the creator of Ludwig, a Linux Foundation–backed open-source deep learning framework.

Bhanu Arya
Senior Software Engineer | Arm

Bhanu Arya is a Senior Software Engineer at Arm with over 10 years of experience building and deploying end-to-end AI systems across cloud and edge environments. As part of Arm’s Developer Advocacy team, he builds AI-driven use cases that help developers unlock the full potential of Arm technology, while championing the developer voice within Arm to ensure real-world feedback shapes better AI tools, platforms, and developer experiences. He is passionate about advancing language models, improving inference efficiency, and sharing practical technical knowledge with the developer community.

Srikanth Cherla
AI Engineer | Unity

Srikanth Cherla is an engineer on Unity’s AI Assistant product. He holds a doctorate in Computer Science (with a focus on AI for Music Generation) from City, St. George’s University of London. Over his nearly two decades of involvement with AI R&D, he has created AI models for Audio & Video Analytics, Music Generation and Recommendation and, most recently, Game Design & Development. These days, he is most excited about working closely with end users, such as Unity Developers, on designing and implementing AI systems that can benefit them.

Marko Tot
AI Researcher | Microsoft Research Cambridge

Marko is an AI Researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge, where he works on
world models and interactive AI systems for games. His research explores on how
game-inspired world models and multi-modal learning can support creators in
designing new interactive experiences, and accelerating experimentation in complex
environments.

Previously, he was a PhD student at Queen Mary University of London as a part of IGGI
CDT, where he focused on analysing effectiveness of planning, reinforcement learning
and world models for decision making system. Outside of research, you'll find him
fencing, or exploring far too many video games - strictly for "scientific purposes", of
course.

Borja Gonzalez Leon
Chief Scientist | Iconic Interactive

Borja is the Chief Scientist at Iconic Interactive, where he leads the research efforts to craft directed open-ended worlds and characters to mark the next frontier of interactive entertainment. He is a member of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) and has been recognized in the Nova 2024 list of Top 11 Spanish tech professionals and the 2021 CIDOB 35 under 35 Leaders of the Future List. Previously, he worked at Sony AI on Gran Turismo 7's AI racing models, improving their generalization robustness and behavioral diversity, and at Meta on ads targeting systems. He holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from Imperial College London, focusing on deep reinforcement learning, out-of-distribution generalization, and compositional generalization of grounded language learning.

June Sig Sung
Head of AI Applied Research | KRAFTON

June Sig Sung has served as the Head of AI Applied Research at KRAFTON since 2023. In this role, he oversees a broad range of AI research and development efforts, including R&D on various AI features such as inZOI’s SmartZoi and its 3D printer functionality, advanced ML-based anti-cheat systems for PUBG, and exploratory work assessing potential applications of AI within the game-production pipeline.

After earning his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Seoul National University in 2012, June Sig joined the AI Team within the Mobile Communications Business at Samsung Electronics, where he worked from 2013 to 2022. He played a pivotal role in the development of S Voice and Bixby Voice, contributing to the commercialization of voice-based interfaces.

Joris Dormans
Founder and Game Director | Ludomotion

Joris Dormans is the founder and game director at Ludomotion where puts into practice his theoretical PhD work on emergent gameplay and procedural content generation. He is also an assistant professor at Leiden University where he teaches Game Studies to humanities and computer science students.

More speakers will be revealed soon...

Organizing Committee

Antonios Liapis
Associate Professor | IDG, University of Malta

Antonios Liapis is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta, where he bridges the gap between game technology and game design in courses focusing on human-computer creativity, digital prototyping and game development. His research focuses on Artificial Intelligence as an autonomous creator or as a facilitator of human creativity. His work includes computationally intelligent tools for game design, as well as computational creators that blend semantics, visuals, sound, plot and level structure to create horror games, adventure games and more. He has also co-organized numerous game jams, and has participated in even more!

Local Organizers

Mike Preuss
Associate Professor | LIACS, University of Leiden

Mike Preuss is associate professor at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science and most interested in using modern AI algorithms to solve practical problems, most notably in ChemAI (as for retrosynthesis), but generally in contexts where human expertise and new AI methods meet. This encompasses LLM and image/video generation tools and how they can be integrated into human workflows meaningfully. Partly automated Procedural Content generation (PCG) is actually a well-known concept in game AI for a long time already and profits greatly from these new developments. Recently, Mike is also involved with quantum games (quantum versions of board games as Checkers) and drone research.

Matthias Müller-Brockhausen
Lecturer | LIACS, University of Leiden

Matthias is a Lecturer at Uni Leiden. He teaches intros to video game making, Python, C++ and advanced coding methods. His PhD was on the symbiosis between Transfer in Reinforcement Learning and Procedural Content Generation.

Giulio Barbero
Lecturer | LIACS, University of Leiden

Giulio Barbero is a lecturer and researcher at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS). He works at the Game Research Lab. He focuses on video games as interaction points between humans and AI, specifically in the fields of education and affective computing.

Program

Each year we strive to bring a diverse program from different aspects of applied AI research and game development.

	Monday 15 June	Tuesday 16 June	Thursday 18 June	Friday 19 June
	Foundations	AI and Games Summit	Talks & Game Jam
08:30-09:00	Registration
09:00-17:00	Introduction and State of the Art	Innovation and State of Practice	Future of Game AI + Game AI Jam	Game AI Jam
from 17:30	Welcome Reception			Farewell Reception

The program includes a lunch and two coffee breaks each day.

Monday 15 June
08:30-09:00	Registration
09:00-10:00	AI and Games: Introduction Georgios N. Yannakakis & Julian Togelius
10:00-11:00	AI that Plays Julian Togelius
11:00-11:30	Coffee Break
11:30-12:30	AI that Designs Julian Togelius
12:30-13:30	Lunch
13:30-14:30	AI that Experiences Georgios Yannakakis
14:30-15:00	Coffee Break
15:00-16:00	Frontiers in Player Modeling Georgios Yannakakis
16:00-17:00	Frontiers in PCG Julian Togelius & Georgios Yannakakis
from 18:00	Welcome Reception

Tuesday 16 June
AI and Games Summit Day 1
09:00-10:00	Ahmad Azadvar Activision
10:00-11:00	Building a Dynamic AI Assistant for One of Gaming’s Most Complex Worlds Stefán Freyr Guðmundsson CCP Games
11:00-11:30	Coffee Break
11:30-12:30	Wes Kerr Riot Games
12:30-13:30	Lunch
13:30-14:30	Jack Parker-Holder Google DeepMind
14:30-15:00	Coffee Break
15:00-15:30	Teaching AI to Play Like Us: Strategy, Tactics, and the Role of World Models Marko Tot Microsoft Research
15:30-16:00	June Sig Sung Krafton
16:00-16:30	Sony AI
16:30-17:00	Joris Dormans Ludomotion

Wednesday 17 June
AI and Games Summit Day 2
09:00-10:00	Konrad Tollmar EA Seed
10:00-11:00	Haiyan Zhang Microsoft
11:00-11:30	Coffee Break
11:30-12:30	Srikanth Cherla Unity
12:30-13:30	Lunch
13:30-14:30	Dafni Antotsiou and Carlos Celemin Sony SIE
14:30-15:00	Coffee Break
15:00-15:30	Bhanu Arya ARM
15:30-16:00	Piero Molino Studio Atelico
16:00-16:30	Lizaveta Sakalova and Vladimir Ciric Wargaming
16:30-17:00	Raw Power

Thursday 18 June
09:00-9:30	Borja Gonzalez Leon Iconic
09:30-10:00	Nørdikat
10:00-11:00	Game Jam Starts Facilitator: Antonios Liapis
11:00-11:30	Coffee Break
11:30-12:30	Game Jam
12:30-13:30	Lunch
from 13:30	Game Jam
14:30-15:00	Coffee Break

Friday 19 June
9:00-11:00	Game Jam
11:00-11:30	Coffee Break
11:30-12:30	Game Jam
12:30-13:30	Lunch
13:30-14:30	Game Jam
14:30-15:00	Coffee Break
15:00-16:00	Game Jam
16:00-17:00	Game Jam Arcade
17:00-18:00	Break
18:00-18:30	Closing Remarks and Awards
from 18:30	Farewell Reception

We are working on this year's program. In the meantime, check out what happened in previous years!

1st School
2018, Chania, Greece

2nd School
2019, New York, USA

3rd School
2021, Copenhagen, Denmark

4th School
2022, Chania, Greece

5th School
2023, Cambridge, UK

6th School
2024, Valletta, Malta

7th School
2025, Malmö, Sweden

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Registration

Our exclusive in-person event offers a great selection of live lectures & workshops by industry-leading experts, one-on-one speed meetings with the organizers, networking opportunities with our guest speakers, and a game AI jam at the end of the summer school!

We have a limited number of seats available. Be sure to secure your seat early by registering for the event below!

Please make sure that you provide the name, email, and affiliation of the attendee for the registration during the purchase.
We will use this name and email address to keep track of your registration and notify you about the event.

Early Bird Registration until 1 March
Ticket	Price*
Student/Indie Developer*	€450.00 +18% VAT (€81.00)	REGISTER
Research Faculty*	€550.00 +18% VAT (€99.00)	REGISTER
Industry Professional*	€800.00 +18% VAT (€144)	REGISTER
*Registration includes lunch and coffee breaks for the entire 5-day event and two networking dinner-receptions.

If you missed your chance, don't worry, we will be opening up more tickets once the regular registration period is over. If you don't want to miss the tickets or other updates regarding our events please consider subscribing to our Newsletter and following us on Social Media!

Main Conference Venue

The 8th International Summer School on Artificial Intelligence and Games will be held in Leiden, The Netherlands, at Leiden University, Gorlaeus Building of the Faculty of Science. The building is located 20 minutes on foot from the Leiden Central Station.