Although many combinations of biofuel blends are available in the market, it is more beneficial to vary the ratio of biofuel blends at different engine operating conditions for optimal engine performance. Dual-injection engines have the potential to implement such function. However, while optimal engine calibration is critical for achieving high performance, the use of two injection systems, together with other modern engine technologies, leads the calibration of the dual-injection engines to a very complicated task. Traditional trial-and-error-based calibration approach can no longer be adopted as it would be time-, fuel- and labor-consuming. Therefore, a new and fast calibration method based on sparse Bayesian extreme learning machine (SBELM) and metaheuristic optimization is proposed to optimize the dual-injection engines operating with biofuels. A dual-injection spark-ignition engine fueled with ethanol and gasoline is employed for demonstration purpose. The engine response for various parameters is firstly acquired, and an engine model is then constructed using SBELM. With the engine model, the optimal engine settings are determined based on recently proposed metaheuristic optimization methods. Experimental results validate the optimal settings obtained with the proposed methodology, indicating that the use of machine learning and metaheuristic optimization for dual-injection engine calibration is effective and promising. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.