The 67th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS 2026), sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Mathematical Foundations of Computing, will be held in New York, USA, November 8–11, 2026. Information about previous conferences can be found at the FOCS Conference Archive.

Papers presenting new and original research on theory of computation are sought. Typical but not exclusive topics of interest include:

• Algebraic computation
• Algorithmic coding theory
• Algorithmic game theory
• Algorithmic graph theory
• Algorithms and data structures
• Analysis of Boolean functions
• Approximation algorithms
• Average-case algorithms and complexity
• Circuit complexity
• Combinatorial optimization
• Combinatorics and graph theory
• Communication complexity
• Computational applications of logic
• Computational complexity
• Computational geometry
• Computational learning theory
• Continuous optimization
• Cryptography
• Dynamic algorithms
• Foundations of fairness and privacy
• Foundations of machine learning
• Online algorithms
• Parallel and distributed algorithms
• Parameterized algorithms
• Pseudorandomness and derandomization
• Quantum computing
• Randomization and probabilistic method
• Spectral algorithms
• Streaming algorithms
• Sublinear time algorithms
• Theoretical aspects of networking, information retrieval, computational biology, and databases

Papers that broaden the reach of the theory of computing or raise important problems benefiting from theoretical investigation are encouraged.

The submission server is available here: https://focs26.hotcrp.com/

Important Dates

Submission Format

Full submissions, submitted by the submission deadline, should contain the abstract and the complete paper. The abstract should summarize the paper’s contributions. There is no page limit and authors are encouraged to use the “full version” of their paper as the submission. The submission should contain, within the initial ten pages following the title page, a clear presentation of the merits of the paper, including a discussion of the paper’s importance within the context of prior work and a description of the key technical and conceptual ideas used to achieve its main claims. The submission should be addressed to a broad spectrum of theoretical computer science researchers. Proofs must be provided which can enable the main mathematical claims of the paper to be fully verified. Although there is no bound on the length of a submission, material other than the abstract, references, and the first ten pages will be read at the committee’s discretion.

Authors are encouraged to put the references at the very end of the submission. The submission should be typeset using 11-point or larger fonts, in a single-column, single-space (between lines) format with ample spacing throughout and at least 1-inch margins all around, on letter-size (8 1/2 x 11 inch) paper. Submissions deviating significantly from these guidelines risk rejection without consideration of their merits.

Submission Instructions

Authors are required to submit their papers electronically, in PDF (without security restrictions on copying or printing). Please submit using this link: https://focs26.hotcrp.com/

The submission process will include a declaration of conflicts of interest, to help manage the double-blind review process. This information can only be seen by the program committee chairs and thus cannot be used by the rest of the program committee to deanonymize authors.

Please only include conflicts of interest as defined by SafeToC:

• Family member or close friend
• Ph.D. advisor or advisee (no time limit), or postdoctoral or undergraduate mentor or mentee within the past five years.
• Person with the same affiliation.
• Person involved in an alleged incident of harassment. (It is not required that the incident be reported.)
• Reviewer owes the author a favor (e.g., recently requested a reference letter).
• Frequent or recent collaborator (within the last 2 years) whom you believe cannot objectively review your work.

Authors are encouraged to also make full versions of their submissions freely accessible in an online repository such as the arXiv, ECCC, or the Cryptology ePrint archive. It is expected that authors of accepted papers will make their full papers, with proofs, publicly available by the camera-ready deadline.

Use of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Generative AI Tools

• 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 in accordance with applicable IEEE publication policies and conference procedures.

For reference, STOC 2026 adopted a similar policy: https://acm-stoc.org/stoc2026/stoc2026-cfp.html

Submission Guidelines

FOCS 2026 will use double-blind reviewing. As such, 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. Authors should not include obvious references that reveal their own identity, and should ensure that any references to their own related work are in the third person (e.g., not “We build on our previous work …” but rather “We build on the work of …”). The acknowledgement section should be omitted at the time of the submission. The purpose of this double-blind process is to help PC members and external reviewers come to an initial judgment about the paper without bias, and not to make it impossible for them to discover who the authors are if they were to try. 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 post drafts of their papers on the web, submit them to arXiv, and give talks on their research ideas.

Submissions by PC members (other than the PC chair and co-chair) are allowed. If any of the authors of a submission is a PC member, this should be indicated in the submission form by checking the corresponding box.

Recommended best practices for references. Authors are encouraged to include hyperlink cross-referencing for bibliographic entries, theorems, sections, and so on, using for example the hyperref, cleverref, or varioref packages. If helpful, a table of contents may be added on a page immediately following the title page; this will not count towards the first ten pages. Authors are asked to avoid "et al." in citations in favor of an equal mention of all authors' surnames. If the number of authors is large, consider writing "\cite{XYZ} show..." instead of "X et al. show". Bibliographic references should preferably be alphanumeric (e.g., the first letters of the authors' surnames, or at least the first three followed by +) followed by year of publication, instead of just a numerical reference. If using BibTeX, this can be accomplished by using \bibliographystyle{alpha} or \bibliographystyle{alphaurl}.

Prior and simultaneous submission. The conference will follow SIGACT’s policy on prior publication and simultaneous submissions. Work that has been previously published in another conference proceedings or journal, or which is scheduled for publication prior to November 2026, will not be considered for acceptance at FOCS 2026. Simultaneous submission of the same (or essentially the same) abstract to FOCS 2026 and to another conference with published proceedings or journal is not allowed. The program committee may interact with program chairs of other (past or future) conferences to find out about closely related submissions. Notwithstanding the above, works that were previously published or announced in another journal or conference with a significantly different format, content, and audience than FOCS might still be considered at the PC’s discretion; in such cases authors should contact the program chair prior to submission.

Awards

Best Paper Award. All submissions are automatically eligible for the Best Paper award. The committee may decide to split the awards between multiple papers, or to decline to make an award.

Machtey Best Student Paper Award. The Machtey award will be given to the best paper or papers written solely by one or more students. An abstract is eligible if all authors are full-time students at the time of submission. This should be indicated at the time of submission. To inform the program committee about a paper's eligibility, check the appropriate box in the web form on the submission server.

Program Committee

General Chair: Marshall Ball, New York University