Dear LICS Friend, At the end of December 2025, the LICS Steering Committee decided that LICS 2026 will not be sponsored by ACM nor IEEE. In particular, the proceedings of LICS 2026 will be published by LIPIcs. LICS 2026 will be a part of the FLoC 2026 meeting; of the ten main conferences at this meeting, nine will be run independently, while one will be sponsored by the IEEE.
The main reasons for this decision are: - Organizing the conference independently is more efficient and avoids the surcharge currently applied to all conference costs by ACM/IEEE. - LIPIcs offers high-quality, open-access publishing with a transparent and sustainable cost structure. - Independence ensures that the organization of our community remains in our hands, rather than being determined by external forces that we can neither control nor influence. We have decided to reevaluate our decision after FLoC 2026 because we wish to fully understand the implications of this change on the organization of future FLoCs, which we consider a major asset to the community. A final decision will be taken after FLoC 2026. This transition is the result of extensive reflection and many discussions with all concerned parties. We were forced to begin this work in 2024 following ACM's decision to raise SIGs contributions from $10K to $25K— a move that would have spelled the end for SIGLOG. While ACM reverted this rise in November 2025, the situation remains uncertain. Previously, the $10K SIGLOG contribution was offset by $10K in income from the ACM Digital Library; however, this revenue is not guaranteed at this stage. You may also recall a questionnaire we organized in June 2025, where we asked for your opinion on going independent or joining SIGPLAN (which was the only alternative at the time). We sent an email to approximately 750 people and received 318 responses, of which 79% preferred independence and 16% favored joining SIGPLAN. Given the significance of this shift, the LICS Steering Committee self-imposed a two-thirds majority threshold for this decision to be enacted. This self-imposed requirement has been met. I hope to see many of you at FLOC'26 [https://www.floc26.org/]. Best regards, Igor Walukiewicz LICS SC Chair You are subscribed to the lics mailing list because you have signed up for it in the past. Submissions to the newsletter: Send an email to [email protected]. Unsubscribe: To unsubscribe, please send an email to [email protected] with the keyword 'unsubscribe' in the message body (without '). Subscribe: To subscribe, please send an email to [email protected] with the keyword 'subscribe' in the message body (without ').
