EVALITA 2026 has just come to an end, and it has been a great experience to be involved in organizing this year’s edition. The workshop brought together a lively community of researchers, offering many interesting discussions and insights on the current directions of the field.
Together with the other chairs, Franco Cutugno, Alessio Palmero Aprosio, Giulia Rambelli, Lucia Siciliani and Marco Antonio Stranisci, we had the opportunity to coordinate an edition that featured a wide range of shared tasks and contributions from both academic and industrial teams. As always, EVALITA confirmed its role as an important meeting point for the Italian NLP community.
During the workshop, Cristiano Ciaccio presented Cruciverb-IT, the shared task on Italian crossword solving that I co-organized with Gabriele Sarti, Felice Dell’Orletta and Malvina Nissim. The task represents the first evaluation campaign specifically dedicated to crossword solving for the Italian language. You can find more details about Cruciverb-it on the shared task webpage (https://sites.google.com/view/cruciverbit2026) and on the final report (Cruciverb-IT Report).
It was truly rewarding to see the enthusiasm around the task and the broader discussions that emerged during the workshop.
