Student Research CompetitionICFP 2026

About

The ACM Student Research Competition (SRC) will take place again this year at ICFP, providing undergraduate and graduate researchers an opportunity to present their original research. The goal is to give students a place to discuss their research with experts in their field and to help them sharpen their research and communication skills.

Following SRC guidelines, the ICFP 2026 SRC consists of three rounds:

Round 1: Extended Abstracts. All students are encouraged to submit a 3-page extended abstract outlining their research. See the Call for Submissions for more details.

Round 2: Poster Session at ICFP. In the poster session, students will have the opportunity to interact and present their work to ICFP attendees and the judges, who will select three finalists in each category (graduate/undergraduate).

Round 3: Finalist Presentations at ICFP. The finalists will present their work to the ICFP community. Based on the presentations, the panel of judges will select 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prizes in each category. The 1st prize winners will advance to the ACM SRC Grand Finals.

Eligibility

The SRC is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Upon submission, entrants must be enrolled as a student at their universities and be current ACM student members.

Furthermore, there are some constraints on what kind of work may be submitted:

Previously published work: Submissions should consist of original work (not yet accepted for publication). If the work is a continuation of previously published work, the submission should focus on the contribution over what has already been published. We encourage students to see this as an opportunity to get early feedback and exposure for the work they plan to submit to the next ICFP.

Collaborative work: Graduate students are encouraged to submit work they have been conducting in collaboration with others, including advisors, internship mentors, or other students. However, graduate submissions are individual, so they must focus on the contributions of the student.

Team submissions: Team projects will be only accepted from undergrads. One person should be designated by the team to make the oral presentation. If a graduate (Masters or PhD program) student is part of a group research project and wishes to participate in an SRC, they can submit and present their individual contribution to the group research project.

Outcomes and SRC Grand Finalists

The top three undergraduate and graduate winners at each SRC receive prizes of $500, $300, and $200, respectively (USD). All SRC participants receive a certificate of participation.

The top three undergraduate and graduate winners at each SRC receive an award medal and a one-year complimentary ACM student membership with a subscription to ACM’s Digital Library.

The first place winners of the SRC will be invited to participate in the ACM SRC Grand Finals, an on-line round of competitions among the winners of other conference-hosted SRCs.

Accepted Papers

Call for Submissions

ICFP 2026 invites students to participate in the Student Research Competition in order to present their research and get feedback from prominent members of the programming language research community.

The SRC consists of three rounds:

• Submission of an extended abstract
• Poster session at ICFP 2026
• Finalists’ presentations at ICFP 2026

During the first round students submit an extended abstract detailing their research to be reviewed by the program committee. Those students whose abstracts get accepted advance to the poster session round which will take place during ICFP 2026. Winners of the poster session advance to next round, where they will give a 5-minute presentation about their work on the ICFP main stage in front of a live audience.

Please note that a work cannot be simultaneously submitted to multiple SRCs.

IMPORTANT DATES AND TIMES

• Submission Deadline: 11 May 2026 (Monday)
• Author Notification: 1 June 2026 (Monday) 12:00 PM CST
• ICFP 2026 Conference in Indiana: 24 August 2026 (Monday) - 29 August 2026 (Saturday)

SUBMISSION OF EXTENDED ABSTRACTS

• Submission Website: https://icfp26src.hotcrp.com

Each submission (referred to as “abstract” below) should include the student author’s name and e-mail address; institutional affiliation; research advisor’s name; category (undergraduate or graduate); research title; and an extended abstract addressing the following:

• Problem and Motivation: Clearly state the problem being addressed and explain the reasons for seeking a solution to this problem.

• Background and Related Work: Describe the specialized (but pertinent) background necessary to appreciate the work in the context of ICFP areas of interest. Include references to the literature where appropriate, and briefly explain where your work departs from that done by others.

• Approach and Uniqueness: Describe your approach in addressing the problem and clearly state how your approach is novel.

• Results and Contributions: Clearly show how the results of your work contribute to programming language design and implementation in particular and to computer science in general; explain the significance of those results.

• Submissions must be original research that is not already published at ICFP or another conference or journal. One of the goals of the SRC is to give students feedback on ongoing, unpublished work. Furthermore, the abstract must be authored solely by the student. If the work is collaborative with others and/or part of a larger group project, the abstract should make clear what the student’s role was and should focus on that portion of the work.

• Formatting: Submissions must be in PDF format, printable in black and white on US Letter sized paper, and interpretable by common PDF tools. All submissions must adhere to the “ACM Small” template that is available (in both LaTeX and Word formats) from https://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions. For authors using LaTeX, a lighter-weight package, including only the essential files, is available from http://sigplan.org/Resources/Author/#acmart-format. The submission must not exceed 3 pages in PDF format. Reference lists do not count towards the 3-page limit.