-conjugated polymers have become an important class of materials for electronic devices. Design of these devices requires understanding such processes as photochemical reactions, spatial dynamics of photoexcitations, and energy and charge transport, which in turn involve complex coupled electron-vibrational dynamics. Here we study nonlinear photoexcitation dynamics in the polyene oligomers by using a quantum-chemical method suitable for the simulation of excitedstate molecular dynamics in extended molecular systems with sizes up to hundreds of atoms. The method is based on the adiabatic propagation of the ground-state and transition single-electron density matrices along the trajectory. The simulations reveal formation of a self-localized vibronic excitation (''breather'' or multiquanta bound state) with a typical period of 34 fs and allows us to identify specific slow and fast nuclear motions strongly coupled to the electronic degrees of freedom. The effect of chain imperfections and chemical defects on the dynamics is also investigated. A complementary two-dimensional analysis of corresponding transition density matrices provides an efficient way to monitor time-dependent real-space localization of the photoexcitation by identifying the underlying changes in charge densities and bond orders. Possible correlated electronic and vibrational spectroscopic signatures of photoexcited breathers are predicted, and generalizations to energy localization in complex macromolecules are discussed.T he science and technology of electronic and optoelectronic devices based on organic -conjugated polymers is evolving rapidly. Numerous high-performance photonic devices fabricated from organic polymers and molecular crystals have been made (1, 2), including light-emitting diodes (LEDs) (2-8) and electrochemical cells (9), display panels (10-12), photovoltaic cells (13-15), photodetectors (16-18), transistors (19-21), lightemitting field-effect transistors (22), biosensors (23), imaging devices (24, 25), and solid-state lasers (26-29). The rational design of novel plastic materials with enhanced functionalities requires insight into their electronic structure, charge and energy transport, and photoexcitation dynamics. This study has become a research frontier that involves many challenges for theory, experiment, and synthesis; however, a sufficient fundamental understanding is yet to be achieved.The theoretical description of -conjugated molecular systems is challenging because of electronic correlation effects and strong electron-phonon interactions. It is well understood from the early days of polyacetylene studies (1, 30) that coupling of the electrons to the nuclear degrees of freedom results in a very rich photophysics of solitons, polarons, and excitons and makes an important distinction of ''soft'' condensed matter from rigid solids based on semiconductor or crystalline metal materials. On the other hand, electron correlation effects have a dramatic impact on the electronic structure, leading, e.g., to the inverse ordering...