IPEC 2026

The International Symposium on Parameterized and Exact Computation (IPEC) is an annual conference covering all aspects of parameterized and exact algorithms and complexity. Its 21st edition will be part of ALGO 2026, which also hosts ESA 2026 and other specialized conferences and workshops.

Important Dates

  • Paper submission deadline: June 29 (23:59 AoE)
  • Notification: August 2
  • IPEC dates: September 2-4 (Wed-Fri)
  • Camera-ready version: end of September (exact date TBA)

Invited talks

The IPEC 2026 invited tutorial will be given by Jesper Nederlof. There will also be a keynote talk by the 2026 EATCS-IPEC Nerode Prize winner(s).

Call for Papers

The 21st International Symposium on Parameterized and Exact Computation (IPEC 2026) invites papers presenting original research in the area of parameterized and exact algorithms and complexity.

The submission system at is open at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ipec2026. Please see submission and COI guidelines below.

Topics

The topics include but are not limited to:

  • new techniques for the design and analysis of parameterized and exact algorithms;
  • fixed-parameter tractability and kernelization results;
  • parameterized complexity theory;
  • parameterized (in)approximability results;
  • relationships between parameterized complexity and traditional complexity classifications;
  • applications of parameterized and exact computation;
  • engineering and experimentation of exact, parameterized, and kernelization algorithms.

Submission Guidelines

Each submission is required to be in the LIPIcs format, using the LaTeX class file socg-lipics-v2021.cls with the option “anonymous”. Note that the class file is a wrapper around the standard LIPIcs class. For a quick start, duplicate this Overleaf project.

We welcome submissions of the full version of the paper. Regardless, the first 500 lines of the submission (equivalent to around 12 pages) should be enough to assess the paper and contain a summary of the main results, their motivation and importance, and evidence of their correctness. In particular, PC members and potential subreviewers may treat the first 500 lines as the short version (the rest being read at their discretion).

Results previously published in conference proceedings or a journal (or scheduled for publication prior to IPEC) or under simultaneous submission will not be considered.

PC members (outside the PC chairs) are allowed to author and co-author submissions.

Double-blind reviewing: As in previous years, IPEC 2026 employs 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. Authors should ensure that any references to their own related work is in the third person (e.g., not “We build on our previous work …” but rather “We build on the work of …”). The purpose of the double-blind reviewing is to help PC members and external reviewers come to an initial judgement 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 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. In case there exist publicly available versions of the submission online, the authors might mention this in their submission (without providing references/links), and briefly explain the differences if any. Alternatively, they might communicate the details to the chairs, who will keep them confidential unless revealing them to the PC is needed for a fair judgement. Authors with further questions on double-blind reviewing are encouraged to contact the PC chairs.

Conflicts of Interest

IPEC takes conflicts of interest, both real and perceived, seriously. Authors are responsible for declaring conflicts of interest with any of the PC members. You have a conflict of interest with:

  • family members and close friends;
  • Ph.D. advisor or advisee (no time limit), or postdoc or undergraduate mentor or mentee within the past 5 years;
  • people with the same affiliation;
  • involved in an alleged incident of harassment (it is not required that the incident be reported);
  • reviewer owes author a favor (e.g., recently requested a reference letter); and
  • frequent or recent collaborator whom you believe cannot objectively review your work.

Submission Link

The submission system at Easychair is open at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ipec2026.

Conference and Paper Publication

Authors of accepted papers are expected to present their work in-person at the symposium, and to incorporate the comments from the program committee. The conference proceedings will be published in the Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs) series after the conference (post-proceedings).

The final submission will be made in LIPIcs format, with a higher page limit of 15 pages plus bibliography (no appendix). More details will follow from LIPIcs upon acceptance. The submissions will be published as post-proceedings, with a camera-ready deadline around the end of September.

Awards

A best paper award and a best student paper award may be conferred. All submissions are eligible for the best paper award, except submissions co-authored by PC members.

Submissions are eligible for the best student paper award if they are not co-authored by PC members and either (1) all authors are students at the time of submission, or (2) all non-student authors agree that the majority of the work was done by students and agree to prepare a statement confirming this if requested by the PC chairs. Nevertheless, priority is given to papers authored only by students. Papers meeting the requirement for the best student paper award should indicate this during submission.

Besides the best paper and best student paper award, during the IPEC conference, the IPEC Nerode Prize will be conferred. The winner(s) will be chosen by a separate award committee; please refer to the webpage for details.

PACE 2026

The Parameterized Algorithms and Computational Experiments Challenge (PACE) was conceived in Fall 2015 to deepen the relationship between parameterized algorithms and practice. Topics from multivariate algorithms, exact algorithms, fine-grained complexity, and related fields are in scope. This year’s challenge features the Maximum-Agreement Forest (MAF) problem arising in phylogenetics (the study of evolutionary histories). For more details, please visit the PACE website.

The award ceremony for PACE 2026 will be held as a part of IPEC 2026, followed by a poster session for top three submissions from each of the three tracks of PACE 2026.

Committees

Program Committee

Sayan Bandyapadhyay (Portland State University, USA)
Max Bannach (European Space Agency, The Netherlands)
Yixin Cao (Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China)
Parinya Chalermsook (University of Sheffield, UK)
Jan Dreier (TU Wien, Austria)
Petr Golovach (University of Bergen, Norway)
Carla Groenland (TU Delft, The Netherlands)
Tuukka Korhonen (University of Copenhagen, Denmark) (co-chair)
Ariel Kulik (Ben-Gurion University, Israel)
Michael Lampis (Paris Dauphine University, France) (co-chair)
Mathieu Mari (University of Montpellier, France)
Marcin Pilipczuk (University of Warsaw, Poland)
Lars Rohwedder (University of Southern Denmark)
Saket Saurabh (Institute of Mathematical Sciences, India)
Roohani Sharma (Institute for Basic Science, South Korea)
Kirill Simonov (University of Bergen, Norway)
Marek Sokołowski (Max Planck Institute of Informatics, Germany)
Vaishali Surianarayanan (UC Santa Cruz, USA)
Karol Węgrzycki (Max Planck Institute of Informatics, Germany)
Michał Włodarczyk (University of Warsaw, Poland)

Steering Committee

Hans Bodlaender (2023-2026)
Édouard Bonnet (2023-2026)
Paweł Rzążewski (2023-2026)
Akanksha Agrawal (2024-2027)
Erik Jan van Leeuwen (2024-2027, chair)
Dimitrios Thilikos (2024-2027)
Tuukka Korhonen (2025-2028)
Michael Lampis (2025-2028)
Meirav Zehavi (2025-2028)