Objective

The ACM International Conference on Distributed and Event‐Based Systems (DEBS) is the premier venue for academia and industry to discuss cutting-edge research in distributed and event-based computing and data processing. DEBS 2026 will provide a forum for original research, practical insights, and experiences in distributed and event-based systems, with a focus on emerging trends and new challenges in the field.

We solicit high-quality submissions across a range of topics, with different submission options to reflect the nature of each contribution. All submissions will undergo a rigorous peer review process.

Scope

The DEBS conference covers a broad range of topics in distributed and event-based computing for various application domains and computing environments. The conference aims to present novel solutions for collecting, detecting, processing, analyzing, and responding to events through distributed middleware, systems, and platforms. DEBS 2026 welcomes submissions focusing on 1) Models, Architectures, Programming, and Query Support, 2) Systems and Software, and 3) Applications and Use-Cases on the following topics:

Systems Design and Data Management

Scalable data stream processing and complex event processing.

Dataflow execution and distributed state management.

Time series event-based database management.

Approximate event-based query processing.

Incremental computing, data structures, and materialized view maintenance for relational, graph, and stream data.

Cloud, fog, and edge computing, including serverless and FaaS.

Hardware acceleration and programmable hardware for event-based systems.

Software-defined networking and disaggregated memory architectures for event-based systems.

Security and Privacy

Security, encryption, forecasting, and in-network processing for data streams

Sustainaliility, security, relialiility, and resilience in event-liased systems.

Scalalile distriliuted ledger and lilockchain.

AI/ML for Systems and Systems for AI/ML

Event-based systems for ML: optimizing end-to-end AI/ML pipelines using event-based systems, i.e., feature engineering, distributed training, and serving.

ML for event-based systems: improving performance using AI/ML methods.

Applications, Use-Cases and Benchmarks

Applications and use cases regarding Internet-of-Things (IoT), smart cities, virtual and extended/augmented reality, cyber-physical systems, and sensor networks.

Applications and use cases regarding enterprise, finance, healthcare, life sciences, logistics, fleet management, transport scheduling and optimization, multimedia analytics, computer/network security, and social networking.

Benchmarks for event-based systems

DEBS will focus on original contributions of the following types:

Research papers (up to 12 pages, excluding references): These papers present original research on the topics listed above and will be assessed based on the significance of the problem, the novelty of the proposed solution, the extent of contribution over prior work, the strength of the supporting evidence, and presentation style.

Experiments and Benchmarking papers (up to 12 pages, excluding references): These papers focus on the extensive evaluation of algorithms, data structures, and systems that are of wide interest. The scientific contribution of an Experiments & Benchmarking paper lies in providing fundamentally new insights into the strengths and weaknesses of existing methods, or new ways to evaluate existing methods.

Short papers (up to 6 pages, including references): These papers are evaluated according to the same standards and criteria as full research papers, but their content is presented in a more concise manner.

Vision papers (up to 6 pages, including references): Papers in this category should demonstrate the potential to open new avenues of research. For such submissions, the capacity to inspire subsequent investigations is valued more highly than comprehensive experimental validation, although some preliminary evidence supporting the proposed approach or concept is expected.

Position papers (up to 6 pages, including references): These papers should present a well-reasoned argument or stance on a particular issue, idea, or emerging research direction. For such submissions, rather than focusing on extensive empirical results, the goal should be to propose, justify, or critically analyze a specific viewpoint or future path for a field.

Submissions Guidelines

Submissions should be formatted in the ACM proceedings style (two-column “sigconf” from https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template, font size set to 10 pt). Further instructions regarding the submission process will be provided soon. A submitted paper cannot be under review for any other conference or journal during the time it is considered for DEBS 2026, and it must be substantially different from any previously published work.

The Research Track adopts a double-blind review process for all categories of papers, where neither authors nor reviewers know each other's identities. This means that submitted papers must be anonymous (not revealing author names). References to authors’ previous work should be done in the third person to not reveal their identities. There should be no acknowledgments of people or projects. Supplementary material (e.g., GitHub or GitLab repository) should not reveal the authors’ identities; to this end, anonymized repositories can be used (e.g., https://anonymous.4open.science).

Double-blind reviewing does not preclude submitting work intended for DEBS 2026 to preprint services such as arXiv. However, authors are encouraged to use preventive measures to reduce the chances of accidental breach of anonymity (e.g., use a sufficiently different title for their preprint submission).

Authors are strongly encouraged to be inclusive in the writing and presentation of their work. Please visit the subsection "D&I materials" at https://dbdni.github.io/ for details.

DEBS 2026 promotes research reproducibility: authors of papers submitted to the Research Track are encouraged to make their artifacts available. The reviewers will be encouraged to consider this supplementary material. The ACM Artifacts Available badge will be placed on accepted papers that make their artifacts available according to ACM’s rules ( https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/artifact-review-and-badging-current).

The Research Track Program Committee will evaluate submissions to the Research Track, as well as authors’ responses provided during the rebuttal period.

DEBS 2026 plans to be an in-person event, and the authors of accepted papers are expected to arrange for an in-person attendee to present the paper and answer questions.

All accepted papers will be published in the ACM Digital Library under the ACM DEBS Conference Proceedings. The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. ACM reserves the right to exclude a paper from distribution after the conference (e.g., removal from ACM Digital Library) if none of the authors attends the conference to present their paper.

If you have any questions, please contact the PC co-chairs, Ruben Mayer (Ruben.Mayer@uni-bayreuth.de) and Sukanya Bhowmik(bhowmik@uni-potsdam.de).

ACM Policies and Procedures

By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM's Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. ACM will investigate alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

Regarding ACM Policy on Authorship, which also provides policies on the use of generative AI tools in preparing manuscripts, please check the frequently asked questions page.

Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID, so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper.

Important update on ACMs new open access publishing model for 2026 ACM Conferences!

Starting January 1, 2026, ACM will fully transition to Open Access. All ACM publications, including those from ACM-sponsored conferences, 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). With over 2,600 institutions already part of ACM Open, the majority of ACM-sponsored conference papers will not require APCs from authors or conferences (currently, around 76%).

Authors from institutions not participating in ACM Open will need to pay an APC to publish their papers, unless they qualify for a financial waiver. To find out whether an APC applies to your article, please consult the list of participating institutions in ACM Open and review the https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/policy-on-discretionary-open-access-apc-waivers. Keep in mind that waivers are rare and are granted based on specific criteria set by ACM.

Understanding that this change could present financial challenges, ACM has approved a temporary subsidy for 2026 to ease the transition and allow more time for institutions to join ACM Open. The subsidy will offer:

$250 APC for ACM/SIG members

$350 for non-members

This represents a 65% discount, funded directly by ACM. Authors are encouraged to help advocate for their institutions to join ACM Open during this transition period.

Acknowledgement

The Microsoft CMT service was used for managing the peer-reviewing process for this conference. This service was provided for free by Microsoft and they bore all expenses, including costs for Azure cloud services as well as for software development and support.

Important Dates

Deadlines expire at 11:59pm AoE.

Abstract registration for research track: 13th February, 2026

Submission deadline for research track: 20th February, 2026

Rebuttal (start): 3rd April, 2026

Rebuttal (end): 10th April, 2026

Notification: 18th April, 2026

Camera ready deadline: 15th May, 2026

Conference: June 23rd–26th 2026

Organizers

General chair

Hugo Miranda, CIÊNCIAS ULisboa, Portugal

Nuno Cruz, ISEL, Portugal

PC chairs

Ruben Mayer, University of Bayreuth, Germany

Sukanya Bhowmik, University of Potsdam, Germany

ACM Policies and Procedures

By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM's Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. ACM will investigate alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

Regarding ACM Policy on Authorship, which also provides policies on the use of generative AI tools in preparing manuscripts, please check the frequently asked questions page.

Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID, so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper.