The LICS Symposium is an annual international forum on theoretical and practical topics in computer science that relate to logic, broadly construed. We invite submissions on topics that fit under that rubric. Suggested, but not exclusive, topics of interest include:
automata theory, automated deduction, categorical models and logics, concurrency and distributed computation, constraint programming, constructive mathematics, database theory, decision procedures, description logics, domain theory, finite model theory, formal aspects of program analysis, formal methods, foundations of computability, foundations of probabilistic, real-time and hybrid systems, games and logic, higher-order logic, knowledge representation and reasoning, lambda and combinatory calculi, linear logic, logic programming, logical aspects of AI, logical aspects of bioinformatics, logical aspects of computational complexity, logical aspects of quantum computation, logical frameworks, logics of programs, modal and temporal logics, model checking, process calculi, programming language semantics, proof theory, reasoning about security and privacy, rewriting, type systems, type theory, and verification.
Authors are required to submit a paper title and a short abstract of about 100 words in advance of submitting the full paper. The exact deadline time on these dates is given by anywhere on earth (AoE).
| Titles and Short Abstracts Due | 15 January 2026 |
| Full Papers Due | 22 January 2026 |
| Author Response Period | 26–29 March 2026 |
| Author Notification | 16 April 2026 |
| Conference | 20 – 23 July 2026 |
Submission deadlines are firm; late submissions will not be considered. The submission link will be made available from the conference page in the course of December 2025.
Paper instructions: Papers must be generated by using pdflatex and an up-to-date LaTeX system. The formatting of the paper is flexible. The length of the full paper however must be at most 12 pages in ACM SIGCONF Proceedings 2-column 9pt format excluding references. (The exact format of the paper will be specified in December 2025.)
Publication: the LICS 2026 proceedings will be published open access.
Instructions to authors: The paper must be in English and provide sufficient detail to allow the program committee to assess the merits of the paper. It should begin with a succinct statement of the issues, a summary of the main results, and a brief explanation of their significance and relevance to the conference and to computer science, all phrased for the non-specialist. Technical development directed to the specialist should follow. References and comparisons with related work must be included. (If necessary, detailed proofs of technical results may be included in a clearly-labeled appendix, to be consulted at the discretion of program committee members.) Submissions not conforming to the above requirements will be rejected without further consideration. Papers authored or co-authored by members of the PC are allowed, with at most one submission per PC member.
Results must be unpublished and not submitted for publication elsewhere, including the proceedings of other symposia or workshops. The program chairs must be informed, in advance of submission, of any closely related work submitted or about to be submitted to a conference or journal. Authors of accepted papers are expected to sign copyright release forms. One author of each accepted paper is expected to register and present the paper at the conference. Remote presentations can be organized for authors who are not to be able to attend the meeting.
LICS 2026 will use a lightweight double-blind reviewing process. Following this process means that reviewers will not see the authors' names or affiliations as they initially review a paper. The authors' names will then be revealed to the reviewers only once their reviews have been submitted.
To facilitate this process, submitted papers must adhere to the following:
The purpose of this process is to help the reviewers come to an initial judgment about the paper without bias, not to make it impossible for them to discover the authors if they were to try. Nothing should be done in the name of anonymity that weakens the submission, makes the job of reviewing the paper more difficult, or interferes with the process of disseminating new ideas. For example, important background references (to papers or tools) should not be omitted or anonymized, even if they are written by the same authors and share common ideas, techniques, or infrastructure. Authors should feel free to disseminate their ideas or draft versions of their paper as they normally would. For instance, authors may post drafts of their papers on the web or give talks on their research ideas.
An award in honor of the late Stephen C. Kleene will be given for the best student paper(s), as judged by the program committee.
Around 10% of accepted papers will be selected as distinguished papers. These are papers that, in the view of the LICS program committee, make exceptionally strong contribution to the field and should be read by a broad audience due their relevance, originality, significance and clarity.
Full versions of up to three accepted papers, to be selected by the program committee, will be invited for submission to the Journal of the ACM. Additional selected papers will be invited to a special issue of Logical Methods in Computer Science.
Lars Birkedal, Valentin Blot, Ugo Dal Lago, Javier Esparza, Claudia Faggian, Marco Gaboardi, Joost-Pieter Katoen, Naoki Kobayashi, Barbara Konig, Orna Kupferman, Dale Miller, Brigitte Pientka, Alexandra Silva, Pawel Sobocinski, Sam Staton, Frank Stephan, Alwen Tiu Bernardo Toninho, I Walukiewicz (chair).
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