The VOT challenges provide the visual tracking community with a precisely defined and repeatable way of comparing short-term trackers as well as a common platform for discussing the evaluation and advancements made in the field of visual tracking.

The goal of the challenges is to build up a repository of considerable benchmarks and to organize workshops or similar events in order to push forward research in visual tracking.


Challenges

Challenges and workshops that we have organized or are organizing.

To commemorate 10 years of VOT challenges, the VOT Innitiative has set up a short online exhibition.

Support

A collection of documentation and tutorials on various topics.

News

VOTS2026 Challenge Update

We are pleased to announce that the VOTS challenges are getting a major overhaul for the 2026 edition! Two new challenges will be introduced:

  • Point-tracking Challenge (VOTSp2026)
  • Referral Tracking Challenge (VOTSr2026)

List of Challenges for 2026

  • VOTS2025 Challenge (Refreshed!) The classical VOTS challenge, updated with a refreshed dataset including more challenging sequences.
  • VOTSp2026 Challenge (NEW!) A dedicated point-tracking challenge.
  • VOTSr2026 Challenge (NEW!) A referral tracking challenge (tracking by description).

Tentative Schedule

  • April 25, 2026 – Challenge details available on the website
  • May 13, 2026 – All challenges open
  • June 22, 2026 – Results submission deadline
  • July 13, 2026 – Winners announcement

Contacts:

Citing VOT Challenge

When using any of VOT benchmarks in your paper, please cite the VOT journal paper as well as the relevant VOT workshop paper describing the relevant benchmark.

@article {VOT_TPAMI, author = {Matej Kristan and Jiri Matas and Ale\v{s} Leonardis and Tomas Vojir and Roman Pflugfelder and Gustavo Fernandez and Georg Nebehay and Fatih Porikli and Luka \v{C}ehovin}, journal={IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence}, title={A Novel Performance Evaluation Methodology for Single-Target Trackers}, year={2016}, month={Nov}, volume={38}, number={11}, pages={2137-2155}, doi={10.1109/TPAMI.2016.2516982}, ISSN={0162-8828} }