The Applied Cryptography and Network Security (ACNS) conference is an annual international conference covering research in theory and applications of information security. ACNS aims to attract high quality papers in all technical aspects of information security. This includes submissions from academia, industry and government on traditional as well as emerging topics and new paradigms in these areas, with a clear connection to real-world problems, systems, or applications.
ACNS gives the best student paper award, with 1500 EUR prize sponsored by Springer, to encourage promising students to publish their best results at this venue. Any paper with a student as an author is eligible for this award. In addition, ACNS gives the best workshop paper award, with 500 EUR prize sponsored by Springer.
ACNS 2026 will be an in-person conference. Since remote presentations or videos will not be accepted, authors submitting a paper must ensure that one of the authors can present the paper at the conference in person.
Submitted papers must not substantially overlap with papers that have been published (other than preprint) or accepted for publication or that are simultaneously in submission to a journal, conference, or workshop with published proceedings. Information about submissions may be shared with program chairs of other conferences for that purpose.
ACNS 2026 solicits the submission of Systematization of Knowledge (SoK) papers, which have been very valuable to help our community to clarify and put into context complex research problems.
It is important to stress that SoK papers go beyond simply summarizing previous research (like in a survey) but also include a thorough examination and analysis of existing approaches, identify gaps and limitations, and offer insights or new perspectives on a given, major research area. We encourage the authors to distinguish SoK submissions by adding the SoK: prefix to the title. SoK submissions will be reviewed by the full PC and held to the same standards as traditional research papers, but they will be accepted based on their treatment of existing work and value to the community, and not based on any new research results they may contain. Accepted papers will be presented at the conference and included in the proceedings.
Submissions must be anonymous, with no author names, affiliations, acknowledgments, or obvious references. Each submission must begin with a title, short abstract, and a list of keywords. The introduction should summarize the contributions of the paper at a level appropriate for a non-specialist reader.
All submissions must be submitted in PDF format, following the unmodified LNCS format (accessible on the Springer LCNS author guidelines webpage) and typeset using the corresponding LaTeX class file (Overleaf template). They must fit within a page limit of 20 pages, including title and abstract, figures, etc., but excluding references. Optionally, any amount of clearly marked supplementary material may be supplied, following the main body of the paper; however, reviewers are not required to read or review any supplementary material, and submissions are expected to be intelligible without it. Submissions not meeting these guidelines risk rejection without consideration of their merits. To accommodate for changes requested in reviews, the page limit for the camera-ready proceedings versions is 30 pages, including references and appendices.
For papers that might raise ethical concerns, authors are expected to convince reviewers that proper procedures (such as Institutional Review Board approval) have been followed and due diligence has been made to minimize potential harm.
ACNS 2026 has two submission deadlines (in September and January) that authors may choose to submit their papers to. Papers rejected after the September round cannot be resubmitted at the January round.
We will publish our proceedings with Springer as a volume of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.
The program co-chairs require cooperation from both authors and program committee members to prevent submissions from being evaluated by reviewers who have a conflict of interest. During the submission process, we will ask authors to identify members of the program committee with whom they share a conflict of interest.
We regard the following relationships as conflicts of interest:
If authors want to specify a conflict of another type than those listed above, they must contact the chairs and explain the perceived conflict. Program committee members who are in a conflict of interest with a paper, including program co-chairs, will be excluded from the evaluation and discussion of the paper by default.
Where research identifies a vulnerability (e.g., software vulnerabilities in a given program, design weaknesses in a hardware system, or any other kind of vulnerability in deployed systems), we expect that researchers act in a way that avoids gratuitous harm to affected users and, where possible, affirmatively protects those users. In nearly every case, disclosing the vulnerability to vendors of affected systems, and other stakeholders, will help protect users. It is the committee’s sense that a disclosure window of 45 days to 90 days ahead of publication is consistent with authors’ ethical obligations.
Longer disclosure windows (which may keep vulnerabilities from the public for extended periods of time) should only be considered in exceptional situations, e.g., if the affected parties have provided convincing evidence the vulnerabilities were previously unknown and the full rollout of mitigations requires additional time. The authors are encouraged to consult with the PC chairs in case of questions or concerns. The version of the paper submitted for review must discuss in detail the steps the authors have taken or plan to take to address these vulnerabilities; but, consistent with the timelines above, the authors do not have to disclose vulnerabilities ahead of submission. The PC chairs will be happy to consult with authors about how this policy applies to their submissions.
Papers on all technical aspects of information security and privacy are solicited for submission. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to the following topics
This category includes foundational cryptographic concepts and methods. It's the bedrock of security research.
This is a rapidly growing area that deserves its own section to highlight both the use of AI in security and the security of AI systems themselves.
This section focuses on the practical security of systems, from hardware to software and networks.
Given the increasing importance of data privacy, this category groups topics dedicated to protecting user data and anonymity.
This category includes research on new attack vectors, malicious software, and methods for analyzing security vulnerabilities.
This section can be a catch-all for topics that are either highly specialized or represent new, forward-looking areas of research.