TL;DR:

- The conference will start with the 1-day PhD school "Introduction to Algorithms with Predictions" (Mon, Feb. 9, 2026).
- Scientific program with talks of 6 (!) well-known invited speakers.
- There will be a poster session.
- Environment encourages collaboration in small groups.
- Kraków is a fantastic Polish city with many sights (e.g., Wawel Castle – former seat of the Polish king) and the very lively old Jewish district Kazimierz. Participants are encouraged to extend their stay to neighboring weekends.
- Rich social program: reception, conference dinner, excursion (city walk – University Museum – Arcade Game Museum), early-morning run and ice swimming, board games session, tabletop football match, retro-programming workshop.
- Cheap accommodation on campus, 15' by tram from the city center, 1' from the conference location.

Important Dates

Abstract Submission: September 15, 2025
Paper Submission: September 18, 2025
Notification: November 10, 2025
Poster Submission: December 1, 2025
Conference: February 9–13, 2026

Invited Speakers

* Jarosław Błasiok, ETH Zurich, CH
* Jarosław Byrka, University of Wrocław, PL
* Sandra Kiefer, University of Oxford, UK
* Linda Kleist, Potsdam University, DE
* Jukka Suomela, Aalto University, FI
* Philip Wadler, University of Edinburgh, UK

Tradition

SOFSEM is an annual winter conference devoted to the theory and practice of computer science. The conference traditionally focuses on the latest results and developments of fundamental research in computer science (informatics), inspired by the algorithmic challenges of our time. SOFSEM has a long tradition as a high-quality research conference, and a venue where researchers from academia and industry in all stages of their career can share their insights.

Proceedings and Awards

The proceedings will be published in the subseries ARCoSS (Advanced Research in Computing and Software Science) of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series of Springer. The Program Committee of SOFSEM 2026 will bestow a Best Paper Award and a Best Student Paper Award.

Topics

The program committee encourages submission of original research papers in all areas of foundations of computer science and artificial intelligence, including e.g.

– algorithm engineering,
– algorithms and data structures,
– theory of machine learning and data science,
– automata, languages, rewriting systems,
– combinatorial optimization,
– combinatorics on words,
– computability, decidability, models of computation,
– computational complexity,
– computational geometry,
– cryptography and security,
– logic in computer science,
– games and online algorithms,
– graph drawing,
– graph algorithms,
– mathematical programming,
– network science,
– parallel and distributed computing,
– parameterized complexity,
– probabilistic and analytic methods in computer science,
– quantum computing,
– robotics,

and other relevant theory topics in computing and AI.


Submission Guidelines

Papers must be submitted electronically through EasyChair. Submissions should be prepared in accordance with Springer's Instructions for Authors of LNCS Proceedings, and use either the LaTeX or the Word templates provided on the publisher's website. The length must not exceed 12 pages (excluding references).

EasyChair submission page: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sofsem2026

No prior publication or simultaneous submission to other conferences or journals are allowed (except preprint repositories such as arXiv or workshops without formal published proceedings). There is no need to anonymize the submissions.

Authors will be required to submit their accepted papers to the arXiv repository at the same time as submitting their camera-ready versions, in order to provide immediate and unrestricted open access to their papers. The self-archived arXiv papers should consist of (essentially) the LNCS proceedings version plus an optional clearly marked appendix.

It is expected that each accepted paper is presented by a different conference participant.


Program Committee

Marthe Bonamy, University of Bordeaux, FR
Pierre Fraigniaud, CNRS and Université Paris Cité, FR
Jakub Gajarský, University of Warsaw, PL
Serge Gaspers, University of New South Wales, Sydney, AUS
Bernhard Gittenberger, TU Wien, AT
Pascal Gollin, University of Primorska, SLO
Gwenaël Joret, Université libre de Bruxelles, BE
Marcin Jurdziński, University of Warwick, UK
Jarkko Kari, University of Turku, FI
Eun Jung Kim, School of Computing, KAIST and DIMAG, Inst. for Basic Science, KR
Yasuaki Kobayashi, Hokkaido University, JP
Jakub Kozik (co-chair), Jagiellonian University, PL
Rastislav Královič, Comenius University, SK
Matthias Krause, Universität Mannheim, DE
Piotr Krysta, Augusta University, Georgia, USA and University of Liverpool, UK
Francis Lazarus, Université Grenoble Alpes, FR
Erik Jan van Leeuwen, Utrecht University, NL
Borut Lužar, Faculty of Information Studies in Novo mesto, SLO
Tomáš Masařík, University of Warsaw, PL
Neeldhara Misra, Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, IN
Krzysztof Pietrzak, Institute of Science and Technology Austria, AT
Adam Polak, Bocconi University, IT
Paweł Prałat, Toronto Metropolitan University, CAN
Eric Rivals, University of Montpellier, FR
Liam Roditty, Bar-Ilan University, IL
Paweł Rzążewski, Warsaw University of Technology, PL
Christian Scheideler, Paderborn University, DE
Joachim Spoerhase, University of Liverpool, UK
Frank Stephan, National University of Singapore, SG
Sabine Storandt, Universität Konstanz, DE
Jacek Tabor, Jagiellonian University, PL
Alessandra Tappini, University of Perugia, IT
Torsten Ueckerdt, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, DE
Jan Volec, Czech Technical University in Prague, CZ
Alexander Wolff (co-chair), Universität Würzburg, DE
Ryo Yoshinaka, Tohoku University, JP
Filip Zagórski, University of Wrocław, PL
Meirav Zehavi, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, IL
Johannes Zink, Technical University of Munich, DE