ICSE 2026 - Workshops

Call for Workshops

The workshops at the International Conference on Software Engineering 2026 (ICSE) provide a forum for groups of 20-50 participants to discuss topics in software engineering research and practice. ICSE Workshops can be quite diverse. They serve as incubators for scientific communities that form and share a particular research agenda. They also provide opportunities for researchers to exchange and discuss scientific and engineering ideas at an early stage, before they have matured to warrant conference or journal publication.

Workshops at ICSE 2026 will be held between Sunday, April 12, and Tuesday, April 14, or Saturday, April 18, 2026, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In general, participation in ICSE workshops is open. The workshop papers will be published by the ACM.

NOTE: Novelties introduced in this call are highlighted in bold.

Submissions

All proposals must not exceed 5 pages, including a maximum of 4 pages for the proposal text, references, appendices and figures, plus 1 page for the draft Call for Submissions.

Submissions of workshops should be in pdf format. Submissions can use the official “ACM Primary Article Template”, as can be obtained from the ACM Proceedings Template page. LaTeX users should use the sigconf option, as well as the review (to produce line numbers for easy reference by the reviewers). To that end, the following LaTeX code can be placed at the start of the LaTeX document: \documentclass[sigconf,review]{acmart} \acmConference[ICSE 2026]{48th International Conference on Software Engineering}{April 2026}{Rio de Janeiro, Brazil}. Since the workshop submissions will not be published (they will only be used to gather information to decide about acceptance, and to enable advertising your workshop), they do not need to adhere strictly to the ACM style.

The main body (max 4 pages) of each proposal must include the following information, in the order specified:

Workshop Title and Acronym
Abstract (200 words or fewer), suited for the ICSE 2026 website
Contact Information for all workshop organizers, including the main contact person
Motivation and Objectives
- Relevance of the workshop to the field of software engineering.
- Anticipated goals and outcomes (e.g., open research problems to pursue, validation objectives, empirical studies).
Format and Required Services
- Workshop format (e.g., paper presentations, keynotes, breakout sessions, panel-like discussions) and plans for generating discussions.
- Intended length (1 or 2 days) and preferred dates (before or after the main ICSE 2026 conference).
- Special services, logistic and/or equipment constraints.
Target Audience
- Expected background of the workshop attendees.
- Plans regarding the mix of industry and research participation.
- Expected minimum and maximum number of workshop participants.
- Plans for soliciting and selecting workshop participants, including whether the workshop will be open or closed (in case of a closed workshop, provide a justification).
Proceedings
- Types of contributions (position papers, research papers, short papers etc. + MANDATORY “extended abstracts”) and their estimated number and page limits. NOTE: Workshops must include an option for submission of “extended abstracts” (limited to five pages or less) and make it explicit that those are free of APC charges. However, for them to be free, the “extended abstract” term should be explicit in the call (and papers should be marked as such by the proceedings chairs). Please note that “short papers” are charged, but “extended abstracts” are not (see https://libraries.acm.org/acmopen/article-types).
- Review and evaluation process to decide about the acceptance of submissions.
- Program committee, including tentative and already committed members.
- Link to the preliminary website of the workshop.
- A proceeding chair, who will be responsible to send the list of accepted papers (paper titles, authors, emails) to the publishers.
Workshop History
- Number of registered attendees and websites of previous editions of the workshop (if any).
Organizers’ bios
- A brief description of each organizer’s background, including relevant past experience in organizing conferences and workshops.

Proposal Review Criteria

ICSE welcomes long-running, successful workshops. Therefore, the chairs may desk-accept proposals for workshops that have had at least 20 participants, on average, over at prior two years’ instances of that workshop, but such proposals must be submitted via HotCRP for appreciation. Proposals for new workshops should carefully consider existing workshops and co-located events to avoid duplication or significant overlaps as these may be desk-rejected. All other proposals that meet the basic requirements identified in the call will be evaluated by at least three members of the program committee. The chairs reserve the right to request the PC to evaluate any proposal in this manner.

For Accepted Workshops

For all accepted workshops, ICSE 2026 requires uniform deadlines for workshop papers submission, notification of authors, and camera-ready copies, as described in the Important Dates below. All accepted workshops must use the HotCRP online submission system (to be provided by the ICSE Organizing Team after proposal notification). Moreover, papers must have a maximum length of 8 pages and all calls for workshop papers must explicitly inform and allow submission of “extended abstracts” (up to five pages), considering ACM Open policies: ACM papers, excluding “extended abstracts”, need to have an OA institutional agreement or undergo article processing charges (APCs) to be paid by the authors (250 dollars for members, and 350 for non-members) in order to be published. It is not possible to pay for extra pages. For workshops that will opt for publication in ACM prior to the event, the call for submissions must include the following statement:

“The official publication date of the workshop proceedings is the date the proceedings are made available by ACM. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of ICSE 2026. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.”

Conditions

ICSE 2026 is not able to pay for registration, travel, or other arrangements for workshop organizers. ICSE 2026 will also not pay for workshop dinners. Additionally, ICSE 2026 cannot guarantee to honor specific requests for holding the workshop on specific dates. All participants, including workshop organizers, keynote speakers, and invited guests, must register for the workshop. One keynote speaker per workshop can benefit from a free workshop registration (note that the free registration only includes the workshop, and none of the other events are included; for instance, the main conference is not included in the free workshop registration). Workshop organizers cannot submit (refereed) papers to their own workshop. This restriction extends to workshop organizer’s currently directly supervised students, even if the particular submitted work does not include the workshop organizer.