Technical Debt stands as a pivotal metaphor in the realm of software evolution, representing development shortcuts taken for expediency that cause the degradation of internal software quality. A critical element of the technical debt metaphor is its ability to bridge the communication gap between technical and non-technical stakeholders within software development teams. The International Conference on Technical Debt (TechDebt) is the flagship conference dedicated to discuss how to identify, address, and manage technical debt in software projects. This premier event unites leading researchers and practitioners in software engineering to explore diverse strategies for managing various forms of technical debt, share experiences and best practices, and identify the most pressing challenges faced by both industry and academia.
The 9th International Conference on Technical Debt will be held in April 2026 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. As the previous editions, TechDebt will be co-located with the 48th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2026).
Call for Papers
Motivation
Technical Debt stands as a pivotal metaphor in the realm of software evolution, representing development shortcuts taken for expediency that cause the degradation of internal software quality. A critical element of the technical debt metaphor is its ability to bridge the communication gap between technical and non-technical stakeholders within software development teams. The International Conference on Technical Debt (TechDebt) is the flagship conference dedicated to discuss how to identify, address, and manage technical debt in software projects. This premier event unites leading researchers and practitioners in software engineering to explore diverse strategies for managing various forms of technical debt, share experiences and best practices, and identify the most pressing challenges faced by both industry and academia.
The 9th International Conference on Technical Debt will be held on Apri 12-13, 2026, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. As the previous editions, TechDebt will be co-located with the 48th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2026).
Topics
The TechDebt conference warmly invites research and practical contributions to its Technical Track. The topics of interest are organized around three main themes: Technical Debt Core, Software Modernization, and AI applied to Software Maintenance and Evolution. They include, but are not limited to:
Technical Debt Core
- Investigations on Specific Technical Debt Types
- Specific technical debt types (e.g., test debt, build debt, architectural debt)
- Less studied kinds of technical debt (e.g., requirement, documentation, security debt)
- Other types of debt (e.g., social debt, process debt)
- Debt in specific domains (e.g., AI-based systems, mobile applications)
- Case Studies and Practical Experiences
- Case studies on successful and unsuccessful technical debt management practices
- Case studies on the remediation of technical debt in real-world projects
- Experiences from industry on managing and paying down technical debt
- Empirical evidence on the effectiveness of technical debt management tools and approaches
- Tools and Approaches for Managing Technical Debt
- Tools, demos, and libraries to identify, assess, and manage technical debt
- Methods and frameworks for identifying, monitoring, and managing technical debt
- Decision frameworks for prioritizing debt items against features and other debts
- Estimation of technical debt principal and interest
- Quality assurance practices to minimize and address technical debt
- Human and Organizational Factors
- Human factors in managing technical debt (e.g., team dynamics, communication challenges)
- Stakeholder perspectives and concerns about technical debt
- The impact of organizational culture and processes on technical debt accumulation and repayment
- Emerging Trends in Technical Debt Research
- Use of artificial intelligence and machine learning for technical debt management
- Software visualization techniques for technical debt identification and monitoring
- New trends in technical debt for AI-driven systems and mobile applications
- The role of software economics in shaping technical debt decisions
- Position and Vision Papers
- Position and vision papers offering novel perspectives on technical debt
- New conceptual frameworks and metrics to study technical debt and its evolution
Software Modernization
- Strategies and patterns for software modernization
- Architecture recovery and reengineering
- Legacy system analysis and transformation
- Automated and semi-automated code refactoring
- Reverse engineering and program comprehension
- Model-driven approaches to modernization
- Modernization of monolithic systems to microservices
- Continuous modernization and evolution
- Technical debt in modernization initiatives
- DevOps and CI/CD implications on modernization
- Empirical studies on modernization efforts
- Tool support for software modernization
- Measuring modernization progress and impact
- Risks and challenges in modernization projects
- Socio-technical aspects of system modernization
- Case studies and industrial reports on modernization
AI applied to Software Maintenance and Evolution
- AI and machine learning for code/design/architecture technical debt prediction and localization
- Large Language Models (LLMs) for code understanding
- AI-assisted code review and refactoring
- Automated technical debt detection and remediation using AI
- AI-based tools for software comprehension and documentation
- AI-driven support for program analysis
- Intelligent recommendation systems for software developers
- Chatbots and virtual assistants for software maintenance tasks
- Generative AI for software evolution and transformation
- AI models for predicting software quality and maintenance effort
- Evaluation frameworks for AI-based maintenance tools
- Empirical studies on the effectiveness of AI in software maintenance
- Human-AI collaboration in software evolution tasks
- Threats and limitations of AI-based software maintenance/evolution tools
Paper categories
We invite submissions of papers to the Technical Track in any areas related to the theme and goal of the conference in the following categories:
- Research Papers (up to 10 pages, plus 2 pages for references only): Innovative and significant original research in the field.
- Experience Papers (up to 10 pages, plus 2 pages for references only): Experiences, case studies, challenges, problems, and solutions gathered from industrial contexts.
- Short Papers (up to 5 pages, plus 2 pages for references only): Early stages of research, new ideas, visions, and/or reflections; or technical debt-related tools.
All submissions must not exceed their page limit for the main text, inclusive of all figures, tables, appendices, etc. Two more pages containing only references are permitted. All submissions must be in PDF.
Upon acceptance, papers will be included in the 9th International Conference on Technical Debt proceedings.
Evaluation criteria
Submissions must be original and unpublished work. Each paper submitted to the main Technical Track will undergo a rigorous review process by at least three members of the program committee.
- Novelty: The novelty and innovativeness of contributed solutions, problem formulations, methodologies, theories, and/or evaluations, i.e., the extent to which the paper is sufficiently original with respect to the state-of-the-art.
- Rigor: The soundness, clarity, and depth of a technical or theoretical contribution, and the level of thoroughness and completeness of an evaluation.
- Relevance: The significance and/or potential impact of the research on the field of software engineering.
- Verifiability and Transparency: The extent to which the paper includes sufficient information to understand how an innovation works; to understand how data was obtained, analyzed, and interpreted; and how the paper supports independent verification or replication of the paper’s claimed contributions. Any artifacts attached to or linked from the paper will be checked by one reviewer.
- Presentation: The clarity of the exposition in the paper.
Reviewers will carefully consider all of the above criteria during the review process, and authors should take great care in clearly addressing them all. The paper should clearly explain and justify the claimed contributions. The weighting and relevance of the above criteria vary for paper types, e.g., a vision paper is primarily evaluated on novelty and relevance and not verifiability.
Submission process
TechDebt 2026 uses a doubly anonymous reviewing model for the Technical Track. Therefore, all submissions to this track have to fulfill the doubly-anonymous reviewing requirements (refer to the ICSE Q&A for more details). Any submission that does not comply with these requirements may be desk-rejected without further review.
Papers must be submitted electronically via the TechDebtConf2026 HotCRP site.
Submission site: https://techdebt2026.hotcrp.com .
Submissions must conform to the IEEE conference proceedings template, specified in the IEEE Conference Proceedings Formatting Guidelines (title in 24pt font and full text in 10pt type, LaTeX users must use \documentclass[10pt,conference]{IEEEtran} without including the compsoc or compsocconf options).
Link: https://www.ieee.org/conferences/publishing/templates.html
Open Science policy
Openness in science is key to fostering progress via transparency, reproducibility, and replicability. While all submissions will undergo the same review process independent of whether or not they disclose their analysis code or data, we strongly encourage authors to make data available upon submission (either privately or publicly) and especially upon acceptance (publicly). If the authors cannot disclose industrial or otherwise non-public data, they should provide an explicit (short) statement in the paper.
Accepted papers and attendance expectations
After acceptance, the list of paper authors cannot be changed under any circumstances, and the list of authors on camera-ready papers must be identical to those on submitted papers. After acceptance, paper titles can not be changed except by permission of the Program Co-Chairs, and only then when referees recommend a change for clarity or accuracy with paper content.
If a submission is accepted, at least one author of the paper is required to register for TechDebt 2026 and present the paper.
Important dates
- Abstract deadline: Thursday, October 16, 2025
- Submission Deadline: Thursday, October 23, 2025
- Acceptance Notification: Monday, January 5, 2026
- Camera Ready Deadline: Monday, January 26, 2026
| Thu 16 Oct 2025 Abstract Submission |
| Thu 23 Oct 2025 Submission Deadline |
| Mon 5 Jan 2026 Acceptance Notification |
| Mon 26 Jan 2026 Camera Ready Deadline |
