** ICDT 2026 - Call for Papers ** ICDT is a series of international scientific conferences on research of data management theory (https://databasetheory.org/icdt-pages). Since 2009, it is annually and jointly held with EDBT (Extending DB Technology). The 29th edition of ICDT, in 2026, will take place in Tampere, Finland. ** Topics of Interest ** We welcome research papers on every topic related to the principles and theory of data management, provided that there is a clear connection to foundational aspects. This includes, for example, articles on "classical" data management topics such as: - The theoretical investigation of various aspects of underlying data management systems (e.g., Indexes, Concurrency and recovery, Distributed and parallel databases, Cloud computing, Privacy and security, Graph databases, Data streams and sketching, Data-centric (business) process management and workflows, Data and knowledge integration and exchange, Data provenance, Views, Data warehouses, Domain-specific databases - multimedia, scientific, spatial, temporal, text data, ...), - The design and study of data models and query languages, - The development and analysis of algorithms for data management, but also includes papers exploring existing or identifying new connections between data management and other areas, such as the areas of: knowledge representation, semantic web, web services, information retrieval and data mining, machine learning/AI, distributed computing, theoretical computer science. In all of the above, a clear emphasis on foundational aspects is expected. You may want to check https://dblp.org/db/conf/icdt/index.html to get an overview of previous editions of ICDT. The Program Committee reserves the right to desk reject a submission when it is regarded to be out of scope. ** Submission Cycles and Dates ** ICDT will have two submission cycles for 2026, with deadlines as follows: All times are Anywhere on Earth (UTC + 12) ** ICDT Submission Cycle 1 ** March 13, 2025: Abstract submission March 20, 2025: Paper submission June 1, 2025: Notification ** ICDT Submission Cycle 2 ** September 3, 2025: Abstract submission September 10, 2025: Paper submission December 1, 2025: Notification Papers rejected in the first submission cycle cannot be submitted to the second submission cycle unless explicitly requested by the reviewers. ** Program Committee ** ** ICDT 2026 Program Committee Chair ** Balder ten Cate, ILLC, University of Amsterdam ** ICDT 2026 Program Committee Members ** Antonella Poggi, University of Rome Sapienza Batya Kenig, Technion Carsten Lutz, University of Leipzig Cristina Sirangelo, CNRS, Université Paris Cité Diego Figueira, CNRS, Univ Bordeaux Dominik Freydenberger, Loughborough University Emanuel Sallinger, TU Wien Floris Geerts, University of Antwerp Francesco Scarcello, Università della Calabria Hubie Chen, King's College London Jeff M. Phillips, University of Utah Liat Peterfreund, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Luc Segoufin, INRIA, ENS Ulm Mahmoud Abo Khamis, RelationalAI Marco Calautti, Università degli Studi di Milano Markus Schmid, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Martin Grohe, RWTH Aachen University Matthias Niewerth, Bayreuth University Miika Hannula, University of Tartu Sanjay Krishnan, University of Chicago Sebastian Rudolph, TU Dresden Stavros Sintos, University of Illinois Chicago Stefan Mengel, CNRS, Université d’Artois ** Submission Instructions ** All submissions will be electronic via EasyChair. Link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icdt2026 Papers must be written in English and provide sufficient detail to allow the program committee to assess their merits. Papers must be submitted as PDF documents, using the LIPIcs style ( http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/publications/lipics/instructions-for-authors). ** Tracks ** 1. ** Regular Research Papers (15 pages, anonymized) ** The results must be unpublished and not submitted for publication elsewhere, including the proceedings of other symposia or workshops. Papers must be at most 15 pages, excluding references. Additional details may be included in a clearly marked appendix, which, however, will be read at the discretion of the program committee (online appendices are not allowed). Papers not conforming to these requirements may be rejected without further consideration. 2. ** Database Theory in Action (4 pages, non-anonymized) ** To broaden the scope of ICDT and showcase the impact of database theory, ICDT 2026 includes again a “Database Theory in Action” track that calls for short papers illustrating interesting applications of database theory in other domains or in solving real-world problems. These papers will be 4 pages + references, and can be based on a previously published paper at another venue. In particular, we invite papers that demonstrate novel and important connections between database theory and neighboring communities such as Database Systems, Operating Systems, Programming Languages, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Knowledge Representation, Distributed Computing, and Industry. At the discretion of the program committee, there may be invited papers to this track as well. The title of the papers submitted to this track must start with “Database Theory in Action:”. These papers should also include clear pointers to all relevant previous publications, websites, tools, repositories, etc. The proceedings will appear in the Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs) series, based at Schloss Dagstuhl. This guarantees that the proceedings will be available online and free of charge, while the authors retain the rights over their work. At least one author of each accepted paper is expected to register at the conference and to present the paper. ** Anonymous Submission ** From 2024, ICDT has adopted anonymous submission (only for regular track papers; submissions for the “database theory in action” track should not be anonymous), in line with other leading conferences in the database community such as SIGMOD and PODS. The intent of anonymous submission is to ensure that the identity of the authors is not presented to the reviewers during the review process. Specifically, submitted papers must not list authors or affiliations, and must not include acknowledgments to funding sources, or other colleagues or collaborators. References to the authors' own prior work must not be distinguished from other references. Where this is not possible (for instance, when referring to a specific system to which the authors have privileged access), anonymized citations are permissible. For more background on the motivation for anonymous submissions, and the mechanisms to achieve it, please consult [Snodgrass, 2007] https://www2.cs.arizona.edu/~rts/pubs/TODS07.pdf Simultaneously, the authors may make their submissions available to the community via pre-print services such as ArXiv and through talks. We do require that work is not labeled as "under submission at ICDT" or indicates that it is under review, but otherwise place no restrictions on sharing results. This does not conflict with the anonymous submission requirement. **Awards** An award will be given to the Best Paper. Also, an award will be given to the Best Newcomer Paper written by newcomers to the field of database theory. The latter award will preferentially be given to a paper written only by students; in that case the award will be called Best Student-Paper Award. The program committee reserves the following rights: not to give any award; to split an award among several papers; and to define the notion of a newcomer. Papers authored or co-authored by program committee members are not eligible for a best paper or a best newcomer paper award.