The 18th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science (ITCS) conference will take place at The Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at UC Berkeley, January 12-15, 2027.

ITCS seeks to promote research with innovative conceptual, technical, or methodological agendas, whose message will advance and inspire the greater theory community. The program committee welcomes papers introducing a new concept, model or understanding; opening a new line of inquiry within traditional or interdisciplinary areas; introducing new mathematical techniques and methodologies, or new applications of known techniques; putting forth a bold, even if preliminary, vision or line of attack; or unearthing novel or surprising connections between different topics.

Important dates

Abstract submission deadline: September 2, 2026 (04:59pm PDT)

Submission deadline: September 4, 2026 (04:59pm PDT)

Notification to authors: November 6, 2026

Conference dates: January 12-January 15, 2027


Program committee

Scott Aaronson, University of Texas at Austin
Ittai Abraham, a16z Crypto Research
Alex Andoni, Columbia University
James Bartusek, Columbia University
Nir Bitansky, New York University
Andrej Bogdanov, University of Ottawa
John Bostanci, Simons Institute and UC Berkeley
Jop Briet, CWI & Leiden University
Nataly Brukhim, DIMACS and Institute for Advanced Study
Niv Buchbinder, Tel Aviv University
Zachary Chase, Rutgers University
Gil Cohen, Tel Aviv University
Natalie Collina, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Anindya De, University of Pennsylvania
Yotam Dikstein, Tel Aviv University
Dean Doron, Ben-Gurion University
Alon Eden, Hebrew University
Michal Feldman, Tel Aviv University
Nick Fischer, Max Planck Institute for Informatics
Ran Gelles, Bar-Ilan University
Ira Globus-Harris, Cornell University
Eli Goldin, Princeton University
Kira Goldner, Boston University
Sam Gunn, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Shuichi Hirahara, National Institute of Informatics, Japan
Rahul Ilango, Institute for Advanced Study
Yuval Ishai, Technion and AWS (chair)
Zhengzhong Jin, Northeastern University
Rasmus Kyng, ETH Zurich
Kasper Green Larsen, Aarhus University
Jerry Li, University of Washington
Nutan Limaye, IT University of Copenhagen
Qipeng Liu, University of California San Diego
Peter Manohar, Institute for Advanced Study
Yishay Mansour, Tel Aviv University and Google Research
Pasin Manurangsi, Google Research
Tushant Mittal, Stanford University
Jonathan Mosheiff, Ben-Gurion University
Jakob Nordström, University of Copenhagen and Lund University
Chirag Pabbaraju, Stanford University
Merav Parter, Weizmann Institute of Science
Rafael Pass, Cornell Tech and Technion
David Peleg, Weizmann Institute of Science
Shiri Ron, Tel Aviv University and Princeton University
Tim Roughgarden, Columbia University
Ramprasad Saptharishi, TIFR Mumbai
Jessica Sorrell, Johns Hopkins University
Eva Tardos, Cornell University
Justin Thaler, a16z Crypto Research and Georgetown University
Grigoris Velegkas, Google Research
Kewen Wu, Caltech
Lydia Zakynthinou, Johns Hopkins University
Meirav Zehavi, Ben-Gurion University

Submission Instructions

submission server: TBA

Formatting. The font size on submissions should be at least 11 point and the paper should be single column. Beyond these, there are no formatting requirements. Authors are required to submit a COI declaration upon submission.

Double-blind reviewing. The conference will employ a lightweight double-blind reviewing process. Submissions should not reveal the identity of the authors in any way. In particular, authors’ names, affiliations, and email addresses should not appear at the beginning or in the body of the submission. (Author and institution information will be uploaded separately on the submission site.) The purpose of this double-blind process is to help PC members and external reviewers come to a judgment about the paper without unconscious bias, and is not intended to make it impossible for them to discover who the authors are. Nothing should be done in the name of anonymity that weakens the submission or makes the job of reviewing the paper more difficult. In particular, important references should not be omitted or anonymized. In addition, authors should feel free to disseminate their ideas or draft versions of their paper as they normally would. For example, authors may (and are in fact encouraged to) post their papers to arXiv/ECCC/IACR etc.

Content. Authors should strive to make their paper accessible not only to experts in their subarea, but also to the theory community at large. The submission should include clear proofs of all central claims. In addition, it is strongly recommended that the paper contain, within the first 10 pages, a concise and clear presentation of the merits of the paper, including a discussion of its significance, innovations, and place within (or outside) of our field's scope and literature. The committee will put a premium on simple and straightforward writing that clearly conveys the results of the paper.

PC submissions. Submissions authored by program committee members (with the exception of the PC chair) are allowed. Utmost care will be taken to avoid COIs with PC submissions and to ensure that the reviews and the discussion remain confidential from the authors. PC submissions will not receive any advantage.

Confidentiality. All submissions will be treated as confidential, and will only be disclosed to the committee and their chosen sub-referees. In addition, the program committee may consult with journal editors and program chairs of other conferences about controversial issues such as parallel submissions.

Prior, simultaneous, and subsequent submissions

Results published/presented/submitted at another archival conference will not be considered for ITCS. Simultaneous submission to ITCS and to a journal is allowed. Papers accepted to ITCS should not be submitted to any other archival conferences.

Online posting

Authors are encouraged to post full versions of their submissions in a freely accessible online repository such as Arxiv, the ECCC, or the Cryptology ePrint archive. It is generally expected that authors of accepted papers will make full versions of their papers, with proofs, available before the conference begins.

Use of generative AI tools

ITCS will follow a similar policy to STOC 2026 and FOCS 2026. Key points (taken from the FOCS 2026 call):

Authorship is restricted to humans: Only human individuals may be listed as authors. Generative AI tools may not be credited as authors or co-authors. All listed authors must take full responsibility for the content of the submission.
Disclosure of substantive use: The use of LLMs or other generative AI tools to generate or materially affect substantive content should be disclosed at the time of submission in an AI Disclosure statement placed at the end of the paper. The disclosure should identify the tool used and indicate which parts of the submission were generated or materially influenced. If such tools play a material role in the research methodology, analyses, experiments, or implementation, this role should also be appropriately described in the body of the paper. Authors may use the following format (if applicable):

AI Disclosure: We used [Tool Name] to assist with [Brief Description of Use]. The tool materially affected [Sections X and Y]. More details can be found in [Section Z]. The authors verified the correctness and originality of all content including references.

Use of AI tools solely for minor copy-editing or grammar/clarity improvements applied to the authors’ own text does not require disclosure.
Authors are fully responsible for their submissions: Authors are accountable for the accuracy, originality, and integrity of all material in their paper, including any content produced with AI assistance. This includes responsibility for errors, plagiarism, misrepresentation, or fabricated content (e.g., “hallucinatory” references) generated by such tools.

Potential concerns regarding compliance with these principles will be handled by the program committee in accordance with conference procedures.

Accepted papers

All the talks will be in person: at least one author of each accepted paper is expected to register for the conference and give an in-person presentation describing the work. In addition, the authors of each paper will be asked to upload a 20-25 minute pre-recorded talk that will be posted online.

Graduating bits

Participants near to graduation (on either side) will be given an opportunity to present (in 2-3 minutes) their results, research, plans, personality, and so on during the "Graduating bits" session. This is one of the important traditions of ITCS, and not to be missed! Details on how to participate will be provided closer to the conference date.

Awards

The committee may award a "best student paper" award. To be eligible, all of the paper's authors should have been students who graduated no earlier than January 1st, 2026. The authors should note the paper's eligibility on the submission page

New! The committee may award a "best paper" award. All submitted papers are eligible for this award.

Code of Conduct

ITCS is committed to an inclusive conference experience, respectful of all participants, and free from any discrimination or harassment, including unwelcome advances or propositions of an intimate nature, particularly when coming from a more senior researcher to a less senior one. All ITCS attendees are expected to behave accordingly. If you experience or witness discrimination, harassment or other unethical behavior at the conference, we encourage you to seek advice by contacting SafeToC advocates (http://safetoc.org/index.php/toc-advisors/)

Proceedings

The accepted papers will be published by LIPIcs in the electronic proceedings of the conference. To accommodate the publishing traditions of different fields, authors of accepted papers can ask the PC chair to have only a one page abstract of the paper appear in the proceedings, along with a URL pointing to the PDF of the full paper on an online archive.