# The CLEF-2026 CheckThat! Lab: Advancing Multilingual Fact-Checking

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.09516 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.09516/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 28 of its 47 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arena](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05685/) (2023)
- [FEVER: a large-scale dataset for Fact Extraction and VERification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.05355/) (2018)
- [Chatbot Arena: An Open Platform for Evaluating LLMs by Human Preference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.04132/) (2024)
- [Prometheus 2: An Open Source Language Model Specialized in Evaluating Other Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.01535/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Automated Fact-Checking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.11896/) (2021)
- [MultiFC: A Real-World Multi-Domain Dataset for Evidence-Based Fact Checking of Claims](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.03242/) (2019)
- [Automated Fact-Checking for Assisting Human Fact-Checkers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.07769/) (2021)
- [AVeriTeC: A Dataset for Real-world Claim Verification with Evidence from the Web](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13117/) (2023)
- [SemEval-2020 Task 11: Detection of Propaganda Techniques in News Articles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.02696/) (2020)
- [SemEval-2017 Task 8: RumourEval: Determining rumour veracity and support for rumours](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.05972/) (2017)
- [RumourEval 2019: Determining Rumour Veracity and Support for Rumours](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.06683/) (2018)
- [The Next Chapter: A Study of Large Language Models in Storytelling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.09790/) (2023)
- [SemEval-2021 Task 6: Detection of Persuasion Techniques in Texts and Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.09284/) (2021)
- [A Retrospective Analysis of the Fake News Challenge Stance Detection Task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05180/) (2018)
- [Missing Counter-Evidence Renders NLP Fact-Checking Unrealistic for Misinformation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.13865/) (2022)
- [Generating Long-form Story Using Dynamic Hierarchical Outlining with Memory-Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.13575/) (2024)
- [JustiLM: Few-shot Justification Generation for Explainable Fact-Checking of Real-world Claims](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.08026/) (2024)
- [The Automated Verification of Textual Claims (AVeriTeC) Shared Task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23850/) (2024)
- [QuanTemp: A real-world open-domain benchmark for fact-checking numerical claims](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17169/) (2024)
- [ArAIEval Shared Task: Persuasion Techniques and Disinformation Detection in Arabic Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.03179/) (2023)
- [SemEval-2019 Task 8: Fact Checking in Community Question Answering Forums](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.01727/) (2019)
- [FactCheck Editor: Multilingual Text Editor with End-to-End fact-checking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.19482/) (2024)
- [ArAIEval Shared Task: Propagandistic Techniques Detection in Unimodal and Multimodal Arabic Content](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.04247/) (2024)
- [SemEval-2025 Task 7: Multilingual and Crosslingual Fact-Checked Claim Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10740/) (2025)
- [Findings of Factify 2: Multimodal Fake News Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10475/) (2023)
- [Can LLMs Automate Fact-Checking Article Writing?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17684/) (2025)
- [Overview of the CLAIMSCAN-2023: Uncovering Truth in Social Media through Claim Detection and Identification of Claim Spans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.19267/) (2023)
- [Think Right, Not More: Test-Time Scaling for Numerical Claim Verification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22101/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [SourceMinds at CheckThat! 2026: NLI-Grounded Citation Auditing in a Multi-Agent Pipeline for Full Fact-Checking Article Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.24802/) (2026)
- [SciClaimSeekers at CheckThat! 2026: Retrieving Scientific Sources for Social Media Claims with LLM Reranking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.24803/) (2026)
- [UTS at CheckThat! 2026: Cite-Frame Engineering for Generated Fact-Checking Articles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.24466/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The CheckThat! lab aims to advance the development of innovative technologies combating disinformation and manipulation efforts in online communication across a multitude of languages and platforms. While in early editions the focus has been on core tasks of the verification pipeline (check-worthiness, evidence retrieval, and verification), in the past three editions, the lab added additional tasks linked to the verification process. In this year's edition, the verification pipeline is at the center again with the following tasks: Task 1 on source retrieval for scientific web claims (a follow-up of the 2025 edition), Task 2 on fact-checking numerical and temporal claims, which adds a reasoning component to the 2025 edition, and Task 3, which expands the verification pipeline with generation of full-fact-checking articles. These tasks represent challenging classification and retrieval problems as well as generation challenges at the document and span level, including multilingual settings.