Call for papers

The 45th ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing
July 6-10, 2026, Royal Holloway, University of London


Dates

All deadlines are at 23:59 AoE.
• Abstract submission: February 11, 2026
• Full paper submission: February 16, 2026
• Notification: April 29, 2026


Scope

The ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing is an international forum on the theory, design, analysis, implementation and application of distributed systems and networks. We solicit papers in all areas of distributed computing. Papers from all viewpoints, including theory, practice, and experimentation, are welcome. The goal of the conference is to improve understanding of the principles underlying distributed computing. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following (in alphabetical order).
• biological distributed algorithms and systems
• coding and reliable communication
• combinatorics and topology of distributed computing
• communication networks
• concurrency, synchronization, and persistence
• design and analysis of concurrent and distributed algorithms and data structures
• distributed and cloud storage, replication and consistency
• distributed computing for machine learning, artificial intelligence and big data
• distributed graph algorithms
• distributed ledgers and decentralized finance protocols
• distributed operating systems, middleware, and databases
• distributed resource management and scheduling
• fault-tolerance, reliability, self-organization, and self-stabilization
• game-theoretic approaches to distributed computing
• high-performance, cluster, cloud and grid computing
• internet applications
• lower bounds and impossibility results for distributed computing
• mobile computing, population protocols and autonomous agents
• models and languages for distributed computing
• multiprocessor and multi-core architectures and algorithms
• peer-to-peer systems, overlay networks, and social networks
• quantum and optics based distributed computing
• security and cryptography in distributed computing
• specifications, semantics, verification, and formal methods for distributed systems
• system-on-chip and network-on-chip architectures
• transactional memory
• wireless, sensor, mesh, and ad hoc networks


Paper submission

A submission should clearly motivate the importance of the problem being addressed, discuss prior work and its relationship to the submitted work, explicitly and precisely state the submission's main contributions, and discuss the key ideas and methods used to support the main claims. Authors should strive to ensure submissions are accessible to a broad audience, while also having sufficient details for experts in the area.

Regular Papers: A regular paper must report on original research that has not been previously published. It is not permitted to submit the same material concurrently to journals or conferences with proceedings. Format and length requirements for submissions are stated below.

Brief Announcements: A brief announcement may describe work in progress or work presented elsewhere. A brief announcement may also report on original research results that can be fully presented in the limited space available. The title of a brief announcement must begin with “Brief Announcement: ”.

Use of AI tools: If any AI tools were used in preparing a submission (beyond copyediting or use of internet search tools), the nature of the usage should be disclosed in the submission for the sake of transparency. If AI tools are used, authors remain accountable for the content of the paper, including avoiding plagiarism and providing appropriate citations of sources.

Submission format: All submissions should be typeset using 11-point or larger fonts, in a single-column, single-spaced format with ample spacing throughout and 1-inch margins all around, on letter-size (8 1/2 x 11 inch) paper.

Alternatively, submissions can be prepared using the official ACM Master article LaTeX template acmart.cls, version 1.80 or greater, using the following documentclass instruction:



\documentclass[acmsmall,nonacm,anonymous]{acmart}

The template is available at https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template.
The following instructions equally apply in both cases.

Regular submissions should start with a title page consisting of the title of the submission, no author information (see paragraph on double-blind reviewing below), and a brief abstract summarizing the submission'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 10 pages following the title page a clear presentation of the merits of the submission, including a discussion of the submission's importance within the context of prior work and a description of the key technical and conceptual ideas used to achieve its main claims. A submission should include all information necessary for an expert to fully evaluate the paper's central claims, including full proofs and experimental results, where applicable. Although there is no bound on the length of a submission, material other than the abstract and the first 10 pages will be read at the committee’s discretion. Authors are encouraged to put the references at the very end of the submission.

Brief announcement submissions must have a length of at most 5 pages including title, abstract, and references.

Submissions not conforming to the rules stated in this call and submissions outside the scope of the conference may be rejected without consideration.

Best practices for citations: Alphabetical orderings of authors can lead to biases. Therefore, authors are encouraged to avoid “et al.” in citations, and instead mention all author names.
Awards

All regular papers are eligible for the best paper award. A regular paper is eligible for the best student paper award if the author(s) principally responsible for the paper's contributions are full-time students at the time of submission. The program committee may decline to make these awards or may split them.


Double-blind reviewing

The conference will employ a lightweight double-blind reviewing process. Submissions should not reveal the identity of the authors in any way. In particular, authors’ names, affiliations, and email addresses should not appear anywhere in the submission. Nothing should be done in the name of anonymity that weakens the submission or makes the job of reviewing the submission more difficult. In particular, important references should not be omitted or anonymized. In addition, authors are free to disseminate their ideas or draft versions of their submission as they normally would. For example, authors may post drafts of their submissions on the web, submit them to arXiv, and give talks on their research ideas. Authors with further questions on double-blind reviewing are encouraged to contact the PC chair by email.


Conflict of interest

Indications of conflicts of interest will be required in the submission form.
A conflict of interest is limited to the following:
• A family member or close friend.
• A Ph.D. advisor or advisee (no time limit), or postdoctoral or undergraduate mentor or mentee within the past five years.
• A person with the same affiliation.
• A person involved in an alleged incident of harassment. (It is not required that the incident be reported.)
• Frequent collaborators, or collaborators who have jointly published papers within the last two years.

If you feel that you have a valid reason for a conflict of interest not listed above, contact the PC chair or one of the Theory of Computing Advocates affiliated with this conference (Faith Ellen and Idit Keidar). The PC chair may request that a ToC advocate confidentially verify the reason for a conflict of interest.


Publication

Accepted regular papers of up to 10 pages and brief announcements of up to 3 pages in two-column ACM proceedings format will be included in the conference proceedings. They must be formatted with the ACM Master templates using

\documentclass[sigconf]{acmart}.



If more space is needed for an accepted paper than is available in the proceedings, a full version must be made available publicly, e.g. on arXiv, by the due date for the proceedings version, and the proceedings version must refer to the full version.

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.

It is expected that papers that are published at PODC 2026 will be presented by one of the authors in person at the conference. In exceptional circumstances (e.g., because of visa issues), a limited number of exceptions can be approved by the PC chair. A paid conference registration by one of the authors of each accepted paper will be required in any case.

Extended and revised versions of selected papers will be considered for a special issue of the journal Distributed Computing. Up to two selected papers will be considered for publication in the Journal of the ACM.


Open Access and Article Processing Charge

Starting January 1, 2026, ACM will fully transition to Open Access. All ACM publications, including the PODC 2026 conference proceedings, 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). If a corresponding author’s institution is on the list of institutions participating in ACM Open, then there will be no APC. Otherwise, each paper will require an APC of
•$250 for ACM/SIG members, or
•$350 for non-members,
unless the authors qualify for a financial waiver. For information on waivers and discounts, see https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/policy-on-discretionary-open-access-apc-waivers. Geographic waivers and discounts apply to authors from certain countries. Discretionary waivers are rare and are granted based on specific criteria set by ACM.