STAIRS 2006 is the third European Starting AI Researcher Symposium, an international meeting aimed at AI researchers, from all countries, at the beginning of their career: PhD students or people holding a PhD for less than one year. The topics of the papers included range from traditional AI areas to AI applications, such as Agents, Automated Reasoning, Belief Revision, Case-based Reasoning, Constraints, Data Mining & Information Extraction, Genetic Algorithms, Human Computer Interaction, Interactive Sensory Systems (Speech, Multi-Model Processing), Knowledge Representation, Logic Programming, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Neural Networks, Nonmonotonic Reasoning, Planning & Scheduling, Reasoning about Action and Change, Robotics, Search, Semantic Web, Spatial & Temporal Reasoning and Uncertainty.