The 58th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC 2026), sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT), will be held in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA from Monday, June 22 to Friday, June 26.
Papers presenting new and original research on the theory of computation are sought. Typical but not exclusive topics of interest include algorithms and data structures, computational complexity, randomness in computing, algorithmic graph theory and combinatorics, analysis of Boolean functions, approximation algorithms, cryptography, computational learning theory, continuous and discrete optimization, economics and computation, parallel and distributed algorithms, quantum computing, algorithmic coding theory, computational geometry and topology, computational applications of logic, algebraic computation, and computational and foundational aspects of areas such as machine learning, fairness, privacy, networks, data management, databases, and computational biology. Papers that extend the reach of the theory of computing, or raise important problems that can benefit from theoretical investigation and analysis, are encouraged. The program committee will make every effort to consider a broad range of areas.
Submission format:
Submissions should start with a title page consisting of the title of the paper, no author information (see below), and an abstract of a few paragraphs summarizing the paper's contributions.
There is no page limit and authors are encouraged to use the "full version" of their paper as the submission.
Each submission should contain within the initial twelve 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.
This part of the submission should be addressed to a broad spectrum of theoretical computer science researchers, not solely to experts in the subarea.
Proofs must be provided that 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, table of contents, and the first twelve 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 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.
STOC 2026 will use double-blind reviewing, and 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 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. (In particular, to manage Conflicts Of Interests, author information will be available to the PC Chair, and possibly to a small set of PC Members on an as-needed basis.) 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.
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.
PC Member Submissions: Submissions authored or coauthored by PC members (other than the PC chair) are allowed.
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 twelve 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}.
Conflict of Interest Policy: The submission process will include declaration of conflicts of interest (COI), to help manage the double-blind review process. This declared COI information can only be seen by the program committee chair and thus cannot be used by the rest of the program committee to deanonymize authors. (Notwithstanding, a small set of PC Members may see some of this information if their input is required in managing COIs.) STOC 2026 will use the following Conflict of Interest Policy, which combines aspects suggested by SafeToC (see here) and the ACM Conflict of Interest policy. Authors should limit their COI declaration to the following categories:
Submission Instructions: Authors are required to submit their papers electronically, in PDF (without security restrictions on copying or printing).
The submission server is open.
It is expected that authors of accepted papers will make their full papers, with proofs, publicly available on arXiv, ECCC, or a similar preprint service by the camera-ready deadline.
By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.
Prior and Simultaneous Submissions: 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 July 2026, will not be considered for acceptance at STOC 2026. The only exception to this policy are prior or simultaneous publications appearing in the Science and Nature journals. SIGACT policy does not allow simultaneous submissions of the same (or essentially the same) material to another conference with published proceedings. The program committee may consult with program chairs of other (past or future) conferences to find out about closely related submissions.
The Use of Large Language Models (LLMs): Authors should follow the ACM Policy on Authorship, noting the following key points:
Experimental Program: Automated Pre-Submission Feedback.
As an experiment for the STOC 2026 conference (see for details), we are offering authors the opportunity to receive pre-submission feedback on their papers generated by an advanced LLM-based model that has been optimized for mathematical rigor. The goal is to provide constructive suggestions to help improve your paper or help find any technical and factual mistakes before the final STOC submission deadline. Our objective is to provide an AI tool for theoretical computer scientists, by theoretical computer scientists and identify the best way to serve the community going forward. We believe an active engagement with the community will help find the best way to empower researchers with advanced AI methods.
All submissions will be treated with the highest level of confidentiality, as regular conference submissions. The submitted paper will NOT be logged, stored, used for training the model, or used for any purpose other than generating this one-time automated review. Access to your paper is strictly limited to the automated pipeline. (In the rare event of a technical failure, a minimal subset of the STOC organizing team may access the paper solely for the purpose of debugging the pipeline.) This access will be in strict compliance with the conflicts you list with this organizing team in HotCRP.
The authors will be able to opt-in and (up to 3 days before the deadline) to submit their paper to be run by this AI tool, and then feedback will be sent to the authors. (The authors (if they wish so) can use the feedback to improve and update their paper before the deadline - we're not changing any deadline for the PC.)
The confidentiality is the same as with the conference submission.The authors must opt-in to be able to use it, and so, if somebody is concerned about the privacy or confidentiality then they should not opt-in.
This tool will not be used by the PC.
For more details, please refer to the dedicated web page for this expertiment.
Presentation of Accepted Papers: One author of each accepted paper will be expected to register and present the work in the form of a talk at the conference. Authors are expected to contact the program chair before submission in case it is anticipated that a strong reason (e.g., international travel restrictions) would prevent all authors from attending the conference. Authors will also be asked to upload a recording of their talk in advance of the conference, to enable it to be viewed by people who cannot attend in person.
Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID, so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper. ACM has been involved in ORCID from the start and we have recently made a commitment to collect ORCID IDs from all of our published authors. We are committed to improve author discoverability, ensure proper attribution and contribute to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.
Paper submission deadline: Tuesday, November 4, 2025, 4:59pm EST.
There is no separate abstract submission deadline.
Notification date: by email on or before February 1, 2026.
Camera-ready versions of accepted papers:
TBA
STOC talks: Monday morning June 22 to Friday afternoon June 26, 2026.
Publication date: AUTHORS TAKE NOTE: The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of the conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work. (For those rare conferences whose proceedings are published in the ACM Digital Library after the conference is over, the official publication date remains the first day of the conference.)
Best Paper Award: The program committee may designate up to three papers accepted to the conference as STOC Best Papers. All submissions are automatically eligible. In addition to the standard COI-avoidance, the final designation process will be conducted by the subset of PC Members with no submission to the conference. Rules for the award can be found at https://www.sigact.org/prizes/best_paper.html.
Danny Lewin Best Student Paper Award: A prize of $500 will be given to the author(s) of the best student-authored paper (or split between more than one paper if there is a tie). A paper is eligible if all of its authors are full-time students 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. The list of past winners can be found at https://www.sigact.org/prizes/student.html.
Access to Proceedings: The committee intends to provide registered attendees with internet access to the Proceedings on a password-protected site that will be available from about two weeks before the conference until the end of the conference. Authors can opt out of this online distribution by contacting the program committee chair by (deadline to be provided later ).
Student Travel Awards: SIGACT provides travel awards to students without available support, and researchers from developing countries. More information on the award process will be posted later on.
Important update on ACMs new open access publishing model for 2026 ACM Conferences: Starting January 1, 2026, ACM will fully transition to Open Access. All ACM publications, including those from ACM-sponsored conferences, will be 100% Open Access. Authors will have two primary options for publishing Open Access articles with ACM: the ACM Open institutional model or by paying Article Processing Charges (APCs). With over 1,800 institutions already part of ACM Open, the majority of ACM-sponsored conference papers will not require APCs from authors or conferences (currently, around 70-75%).
Authors from institutions not participating in ACM Open will need to pay an APC to publish their papers, unless they qualify for a financial or discretionary waiver. To find out whether an APC applies to your article, please consult the list of participating institutions in ACM Open and review the APC Waivers and Discounts Policy. Keep in mind that waivers are rare and are granted based on specific criteria set by ACM.
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Shweta Agrawal, IIT Madras, India |
Jason Li, CMU, USA |