Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia
May 18-21, 2026
PROGRAM
Presenting authors are underlined. Session Chairs and Discussants are being added.
Conference Chairs
Chair: Joshua D. Rauh (Stanford Graduate School of Business)
Vice Chair: Stefano Giglio (Yale School of Management)
Associate Chair: Stavros Panageas (UCLA Anderson)
Host’s Faculty Sponsor: Marc Lipson
Keynote Speakers
Presidential Address and RAPS & RCFS Keynote: Janice C. Eberly (Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University)
Tuesday May 19, 3:45pm
Cavalcade Keynote: Joshua D. Rauh (Stanford Graduate School of Business)
Wednesday May 20, 12:15pm
Awards
Best Paper in Asset Pricing
Best Paper in Corporate Finance
Arthur Warga Award for Best Paper in Fixed Income
PhD Student Grants
Registration
–Register Here
-Registration deadline: May 10
-All participants must register, including session chairs, discussants, presenters, and attending co-authors.
-Registration fees may be paid via credit card (Visa, Mastercard) or PayPal. If you are paying with a credit card, you do not need to create a PayPal account; simply click past the PayPal Sign In to pay with your card.
-PhD Students and Darden faculty receive registration fee waivers.
-Registration is nonrefundable.
–Early Registration (through April 8)
SFS Members: $150/Nonmembers: $190
–Regular Registration (beginning April 9)
SFS Members: $175/Nonmembers: $215
Accommodations
The Forum Hotel (on the Darden campus, $199/night, walkable from Darden)
The Draftsman Hotel ($194/night)
The Residence Inn Marriott ($184/night)
Please note that all room blocks expire March 18th, 2026, or sooner if the blocks run out, so we suggest making your reservation promptly.
Travel Logistics
Visiting Charlottesville: details from the Darden School, including maps and driving instructions
Air Travel
- Closest Airport: Charlottesville/Albemarle Airport (CHO) – Approximately 9 miles (15–20 minutes) from UVA Darden. CHO is the most convenient option, offering service through major carriers with connections from large hubs.
- Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) – Approximately 100 miles (about 2 hours by car). Note: There is not a direct train from Washington Dulles IAD to Charlottesville.
- Richmond International Airport (RIC) – Approximately 85 miles (about 1 hour 15 minutes by car). Richmond car service: Love Limo.
- Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) – Approximately 120 miles (about 2.5 hours by car).
Ground Transportation
- Ride-share services (Uber/Lyft) and taxis are readily available in the Charlottesville area, including from CHO to Darden. Rental cars are available at CHO and at the larger regional airports. A rental car may be helpful if you plan to explore the area or prefer additional flexibility. Local car service: Ambassador Limo.
- Hotel Shuttles: The Residence Inn (one of our room block options) is pleased to provide attendees with complimentary shuttle service to the Darden School of Business. The shuttle will depart the hotel lobby at 8:00 AM and again at 9:00 AM on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings. (Please note that return service will not be provided in the afternoon and you will need to make individual travel arrangements.)
- Parking: For attendees renting a car, the following parking areas on Darden’s campus will be available for complimentary parking from Monday evening through the conclusion of the conference: D1 Faculty Lot, D10 Darden Garage
Decisions
We received 1473 submissions. The acceptance rate was 9.8%.
-Conference decisions were sent on February 11, 2026.
-RCFS and RAPS dual submission decisions will be sent separately in the next few weeks.
Authors of Accepted Papers
Please log in ConfTool to make updates to your paper. It must be the submitting author logging in to make the updates. The submitting author may upload a new PDF of the paper, update the title and author information, and indicate the presenting author, by clicking Your Submissions –> Final Upload
Presenting
The Cavalcade format is 45 minutes per paper, with 20 minutes for authors, up to 15 minutes for discussants, and 10 minutes for audience and author participation. Session Chairs may adjust this format if needed; please refer to your Session Chair.
Venue Information
UVA Darden
100 Darden Boulevard
Charlottesville, VA 22903 USA
Submitting Your Paper
-The submission period is closed.
–Call for Papers
-Submission Period: November 7 – December 11, 2025. The system will close at 11:59pm ET on December 11; make sure to begin your submission with time to complete it before the deadline.
-The submitted paper must not be accepted (or conditionally accepted) at a journal.
-Papers that have been presented (or are scheduled to be presented) at the WFA, AFA, and/or SFS Cavalcade Asia-Pacific are allowed.
-Authors of accepted papers are required to attend their session regardless of which day the session is scheduled; if an author can not make it to the scheduled time, the conference reserves the right to pull the paper.
-You do not need to remove author names from the uploaded paper.
-Each paper may only be submitted once. You may not submit the same paper as both a regular submission and a student submission.
Submission Fees
-The submission fee is $75. There are no refunds.
-PhD Student Waiver: For papers in which ALL co-authors are doctoral students, the submission fee is waived. Do not select this option if coauthors on the paper are not PhD students. To receive the waiver, you must select the Student Submission category. Postdocs do not qualify for the PhD Student waiver.
-ConfTool does not save accounts from previous conferences so you will need to make a new account even if you have made an account for a previous Cavalcade.
-ConfTool requires you to pay the fee before you can submit your paper. If you are submitting multiple papers, ConfTool will ask you to pay all the fees at once, then upload each paper individually. Payments may be made via PayPal or credit card (Visa, Mastercard). You do not need a PayPal account; to pay with credit card, simply click past the PayPal log-in prompt.
PhD Students
We especially encourage PhD students to submit to the conference. The SFS will provide up to 8 travel grants to PhD student authors. To qualify, all authors of a paper must be PhD students at the time of the conference. A grant of up to $1,000 will be awarded to the presenting author who travels from North America, or up to $2,000 from overseas.
Dual Submission Option with RAPS and RCFS
You have the option to elect dual submission to either the Review of Corporate Finance Studies or the Review of Asset Pricing Studies. If the journal you select decides not to send your paper out for review, the editor may refer your paper to the other journal, if appropriate, or to the Review of Financial Studies, for possible review. Thus, by selecting the dual submission option, you have implicitly agreed to be reviewed by any of the three SFS journals. Please see our Dual Submission Policy.
About the Cavalcade
The SFS Cavalcade is an annual conference covering all areas of finance. Our goal is to provide a setting that produces the kind of in-depth participation of a smaller conference while accommodating the variety of papers of a larger one. The SFS Cavalcade is a joint project of the Review of Financial Studies, the Review of Corporate Finance Studies, and the Review of Asset Pricing Studies.
Contact Us
Contact cavalcadenorthamerica@sfs.org.