September)
**HIGHLIGHTS'26** is scheduled **from September 7 to September 11, 2026**
at **TU Wien**. It is co-organized by ISTA, TU Wien and Wolfgang Pauli
Institute. Highlights'26 will take place at the main building of TU Wien,
Karlsplatz 13, in the center of Vienna.
HIGHLIGHTS'26 will be followed by the **Highlights' Collaborative Research
Week (CREW)**, from **September 14 to 18, 2026**, at **ISTA**.
**HIGHLIGHTS'26** is the fourteenth in the series of international
conferences "Highlights of Logic, Games and Automata", aiming at
integrating the community working in algorithmic model theory, automata
theory, databases, games for logic and verification, logic and
verification. Papers from these areas are dispersed across many
conferences, which makes them difficult to follow. A visit to the
HIGHLIGHTS conference should offer a wide picture of the latest research in
the field and a chance to meet everybody in the community, not just those
who happen to publish in one particular proceedings volume. There are no
publications.
**HIGHLIGHTS'26** key features:
- HIGHLIGHTS is a conference without publications, where speakers give
short presentations of their best work.
- A chat of the conference is available during the event, and throughout
the year.
- There is an early round of submissions and notifications to help with
travel planning
- The _Highlights' Collaborative REsearch Week_ (**CREW**) offers means for
research collaborations/discussions between participants. CREW is scheduled
after the conference.
- The _Highlights Extended Stay Support Scheme_ (**HESSS**) helps
participants find collaborators and organise visits in the vicinity of
HIGHLIGHTS.
We encourage you to attend and present your best work - be it already
published or not - at **HIGHLIGHTS'26**.
## SCOPE
Representative areas include, but are not restricted to:
- Algebraic and categorical models of computation
- Algorithmic model theory
- Automata theory
- Databases
- Games for logic, verification, and semantics
- Logic
- Verification
## IMPORTANT DATES AND INFORMATION
- HIGHLIGHTS'26 webpage: https://highlights-conference.org/2026/
- Registration to the chat at https://highlights-conference.org/2026/zulip
(no need if you did it last year)
- Registration page: TBA
- Early-submission deadline: April 17, 2026
- Early notification: May 08, 2026
- Regular-submission deadline: May 29, 2026
- Regular Notification: June 19, 2026
- Early-bird registration deadline: July 17, 2026
- Registration deadline: August 17, 2026
- Conference: September 7- 11, 2026.
- Highlights' Collaborative Research Week (CREW): September 14 - 16, 2026
- Registration fee: TBA (tentative 160 EUR)
## MODALITIES OF ATTENDANCE
**HIGHLIGHTS'26** is an event that will take place on-site (barring
unforeseen circumstances), and the preferred form of participation is in
person. Remote attendance via a video stream will also be offered, but with
limited possible interactions for these participants.
Submission for a presentation at Highlights'26 is open to everyone, and
attendance to the conference is not a requirement. The selection procedure
will not take into account in-person attendance. Authors who do not intend
to attend Highlights'26 in-person must commit to this choice when
submitting their talk proposal. If accepted, authors of such talk proposals
will have the opportunity to share a prerecorded video of their talk, which
will be made available on the conference website.
Before coming from far away, please review how your trip and international
flights are contributing to climate change. We encourage you to take the
train as much as possible, possibly taking the opportunity for visiting
colleagues on the way and thus decomposing the travel into smaller pieces.
More generally, we encourage you to make the most of your stay. This means
extending your journey to the previous and/or following weeks for more
scientific activities in Vienna and around. Several initiatives are here to
help you in this task:
- You can participate to the **Highlights' Collaborative Research Week**
(**[CREW](https://highlights-conference.org/2026/hcrw), September 14 -
18**) in the week after HIGHLIGHTS, in ISTA.
- You can use the **Highlights Extended Stay Support Scheme** (**[HESSS](
https://highlights-conference.org/2026/hesss)**) for finding collaborators
and organising visits.
## SUBMISSIONS AND GUIDELINES
Submissions should take the form of a short abstract describing the content
of the presentation and its interest. It should serve as a proposal for a
presentation. Hence, submissions should have a single author — the speaker.
They can concern any recently published, to be published, or ongoing work
of the speaker. We expect you to present your favourite result of the year,
so there should be at most one submission per speaker. The abstract should
list co-authors, if any. Optionally, an extended abstract of up to two
pages may be attached as a PDF file.
We encourage both young and senior researchers to present.
The **regular round of submissions is open until May 29, 2026**, with a
notification by June 19, 2026.
Submissions will not lead to publications. There are no formal proceedings
and we encourage the presentation of work published or presented elsewhere.
The talk (which is short, around 10 minutes) can be doubled with a poster.
Further information about poster submissions will be provided.
**Submission page:** https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=highlights26
## HIGHLIGHTS' COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH WEEK (CREW)
**HIGHLIGHTS'26** will be followed by the _Highlights' Collaborative
Research Week_ (**CREW**), **from September 14 to 18 at the Institute of
Science and Technology Austria**.
Note that this is located outside of Vienna, ISTA being 20 km North of
Vienna. Special hosting arrangements on site during CREW will be made
available for a limited number of participants on a first-come-first-served
basis. Contact Léonard Brice (Leonard.brice@ista.ac.at) to avail the
accommodation at ISTA.
Participants to CREW are free to organise any scientific activity they
wish. Possibilities can be to
- meet someone in particular and work together,
- organise or attend a seminar/workshop/reading group,
- gather for solving open problems,
- solicit, offer and participate in a lecture.
Working spaces will be provided on site for these activities to take place.
We encourage participants to declare their intent to come and offer
activities in advance using the chat of highlights.
## HIGHLIGHTS EXTENDED STAY SUPPORT SCHEME (HESSS)
The **HESSS** is an incentive for collaborations between participants of
the conference and researchers working in research groups reachable by
train from the conference location. The objective is to foster interactions
with low carbon footprint. The mechanism is as follows:
- Research groups willing to participate in the scheme will be listed on
the webpage: https://highlights-conference.org/2026/hesss. These groups are
offering to fund collaborations between HIGHLIGHTS participants and their
members.
- The pair of a HIGHLIGHTS participant and a member of a listed research
group submit a proposal, which takes the form of an email containing names,
period of collaboration, and a sentence describing the planned activity. It
has to be sent to the **HESSS** contact person of the research unit.
- The decision of acceptance is up to the research group. In particular,
it may be subject to scientific scope, number of requests, or e.g.,
favouring distant participants.
- The only strict rule is that the visit should be around HIGHLIGHTS, and
no airplane should be taken by the visitor to travel from HIGHLIGHTS to the
visit location.
## INVITED SPEAKERS
### TUTORIALS
TBA
### KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
TBA
### PROGRAM COMMITTEE HIGHLIGHTS'26
A. R. Balasubramanian, MPI-SWS
Manuel Bodirsky, TU Dresden
Lorenzo Clemente, University of Warsaw (chair)
Javier Esparza, TU Müchen
Emmanuel Filiot, Univerté Libre de Bruxelles
Zeinab Galal, Kyoto University
Shankaranarayanan Krishna, IIT Bombay
Ugo dal Lago, University of Bologna
Nathan Lhote, Aix-Marseille University
Christof Löding, Aachen Uniersity
Rupak Majumdar, MPI-SWS
Tito Nguyen, CNRS, Aix-Marseille University
Karin Quaas, Leipzig University
Ocan Sankur, CNRS, Rennes University
### ORGANISING COMMITTEE
Laura Kovacs, TU Wien c/o WPI
Michael Sammler, ISTA
### STEERING COMMITTEE
- Antoine Amarilli (environmental chair)
- León Bohn (webmaster)
- Antonio Casares
- Supratik Chakraborty
- Thomas Colcombet (chair)
- Bartek Klin
- K. S. Thejaswini (publicity chair)
- Sophie Tison
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