FOCS 2026 will be held in New York City Nov 8 - 11! CFP is up (link below). Submit your best work in theoretical computer science by April 1, 5pm ET.

New year, new team, new FOCS! Follow this account for updates and announcements about #FOCS2026!

The Call for Papers and submission server for #FOCS2026 are up! ⏰ Deadline: April 1, 5:00 PM EDT (21:00 UTC) sanjeevkhanna.org/FOCS2026_CFP...

And... that's a wrap for #FOCS2025! Thanks to authors, attendees, program committee members, and sponsors who all made it happen! (Also, the occasional bin chicken)

Best #FOCS2025 Paper talks: Rachel Yun Zhang (left), Michael Jaber (middle), and Mohammad T. Hajiaghayi (right) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machtey...

Best #FOCS2025 Student Paper (Machtey award) talks: Rahul Ilango (left) and Miryam Mi-Ying Huang and Er-Cheng Tang en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machtey...

Ready for the conference banquet!

The info and slides of the 18 🎓 "Graduating Bits" participants are now available on the website! Look at them, hire them! focs.computer.org/2025/graduat...

The info and slides of the 18 🎓 "Graduating Bits" participants are now available on the website! Look at them, hire them! focs.computer.org/2025/graduat...

Second plenary session of the conference: Sebastien Bubeck (OpenAI) on "Recent Advances in LLMs for Mathematics" #FOCS2025

📢 #FOCS2026 will be held in NewYork City, USA! Nov 8–11, 2026 at NYU (colocated with TCC) General Chair: Marshall Ball PC Chair: Sanjeev Khanna (Co-Chair: Sepehr Assadi)

Winners of the #FOCS2025 Cartoon Caption Contest: - "This guy is about to blow up the polynomial hierarchy." [ Rachel Zhang ] - "Not exactly what I meant by 'increase FOCS acceptance rate.'" [ @mahdi.ch ]

And from my " #FOCS2025 General Chair report" (note: the actual number is 302, there was an on-site registration later that day)

🏆 #FOCS2025 Best Paper Awards (3 papers!) Explicit Lossless Vertex Expanders Jun-Ting Hsieh, Alexander Lubotzky, Sidhanth Mohanty, Assaf Reiner, Rachel Yun Zhang

🏆 #FOCS2025 Best Student Paper Awards 🎓 Godel in Cryptography: Effectively Zero Knowledge Proofs for NP with No Interaction, No Setup, and Perfect Soundness Rahul Ilango Obfuscation of Unitary Quantum Programs Mi-Ying Huang, Er-Cheng Tang

🏆 FOCS 2025 Test of Time awards: Private Information Retrieval Benny Chor, Eyal Kushilevitz, Oded Goldreich, Madhu Sudan 36th FOCS, 1995 Gambling in a rigged casino: The adversarial multi-armed bandit Paul Auer, Nicoló Cesa-Bianchi Yoav Freund, Robert Schapire 36th FOCS, 1995

📢 #FOCS2026 will be held in NewYork City, USA! Nov 8–11, 2026 at NYU (colocated with TCC) General Chair: Marshall Ball PC Chair: Sanjeev Khanna (Co-Chair: Sepehr Assadi)

First plenary session of the conference: Shafi Goldwasser (MIT and Berkeley) on "A Crypto/Complexity Theorist Perspective on Trusting AI" #FOCS2025

Kicking off the first day of the main conference with proper caffeination! #FOCS2025

Wonderfully crowded "Graduating Bits" session at #FOCS2025!

The conference is starting in a few hours! We'll post here information about #FOCS2025 as it goes, including the blog posts attendees write about the talks and events. And the "cartoon caption contest" (courtesy of Mary Wootters) has started, along with the offline scavenger hunt! Here's a teaser:

The pre-recorded videos (for the talks whose authors opted in to submit one) are now available on our YouTube channel: m.youtube.com/@FOCS2025 They're also linked from the main website's schedule!

The pre-recorded videos (for the talks whose authors opted in to submit one) are now available on our YouTube channel: m.youtube.com/@FOCS2025 They're also linked from the main website's schedule!

Getting the final touches ahead of #FOCS2025...

Only seven days to go: see you next week for #FOCS2025 in Sydney! If you have any questions about travel, Sydney, or Australia, check out our FAQ: focs.computer.org/2025/travel-... www.timeanddate.com/countdown/su...

We have compiled a helpful list of Frequently Asked Questions, to help with planning your trip to #FOCS2025: focs.computer.org/2025/travel-... Including (among more useful info) important questions, such as "Where can I pet a koala?", "How do I eat Vegemite?" and, of course, "Where is the beach?"

We have compiled a helpful list of Frequently Asked Questions, to help with planning your trip to #FOCS2025: focs.computer.org/2025/travel-... Including (among more useful info) important questions, such as "Where can I pet a koala?", "How do I eat Vegemite?" and, of course, "Where is the beach?"

A mobile-friendly and easier to use version of the #FOCS2025 is now available: focs2025schedule.ag-pages.workers.dev (h/t @abigailgentle.com)

The list of social activities for #FOCS2025 has been posted! Scavenger hunt, morning runs, random walks, networking event, senior/junior lunches... Introducing, this year, "Succinct Sketches" for volunteers to blog (semi) live from the conference! focs.computer.org/2025/activit...

The list of social activities for #FOCS2025 has been posted! Scavenger hunt, morning runs, random walks, networking event, senior/junior lunches... Introducing, this year, "Succinct Sketches" for volunteers to blog (semi) live from the conference! focs.computer.org/2025/activit...

A mobile-friendly and easier to use version of the #FOCS2025 is now available: focs2025schedule.ag-pages.workers.dev (h/t @abigailgentle.com)

Exactly two weeks until #FOCS2025! The schedule is up, the sun is high, the workshops primed. Social activities: to be announced in the coming week. See you in a fortnight!

Sydney says hi — see you in 3 weeks!

Looking for inspiration for your #FOCS2025 pre-recorded talk? Check out this video youtu.be/Ygu5m-yPFhg

The #FOCS2025 schedule is up! focs.computer.org/2025/schedule/

Only 25 hours left before the #FOCS2025 early bird registration deadline! focs.computer.org/2025/register/

The #FOCS2025 schedule is up! focs.computer.org/2025/schedule/

While waiting for the full technical program, some useful information! Sunday, Dec 14: Reception 🥂 Monday, Dec 15: Business meeting 🧑‍💼 Tuesday, Dec 16: Banquet 🍴🍷 Friday, Dec 17: Best paper awards! 🏆

Your countdown to #FOCS2025! Yes, we're excited for it. What gave it away? www.timeanddate.com/countdown/su...

And the flip side! If you are on the 🎓 job market, you can provide your information at this form: forms.gle/ipAQg4cmBsmj... This will only be shared with the #FOCS2025 sponsors and relevant parties/attendees for them to contact you during the conference. More: focs.computer.org/2025/activit...

If your institution wants to advertise Theory jobs to the FOCS 2025 attendees, a form has been set up on our website: focs.computer.org/2025/activit... The spreadsheet collating job openings in TCS will be made available to attendees (and online), to help graduating students and junior researchers.

Update: yes. In addition to their in-person talks, authors will have the option to upload a pre-recorded video, to be made available on the #FOCS2025 YouTube channel. Expect an email by the PC chairs shortly!

One month to #FOCS2025!

One month to #FOCS2025!

If your institution wants to advertise Theory jobs to the FOCS 2025 attendees, a form has been set up on our website: focs.computer.org/2025/activit... The spreadsheet collating job openings in TCS will be made available to attendees (and online), to help graduating students and junior researchers.

Update: We have decided not to provide Vegemite jars in the #FOCS2025 swag bag, on the grounds that this may be prohibited under the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention. You will, however, get tim-tams.

We're still finalizing the conference program, so stay tuned! As a teaser: we heard jetlag is a thing, and mornings are hard—especially after Sunday's workshops and welcome reception. To help with that, Monday morning will feature barista coffee: begin the week with a flat white! ☕

The early registration deadline is November 21, 2025 (but don't wait until the last minute to book your hotel! December in Sydney is peak season, and while there are many hotels in the area, they tend to get booked quickly as summer nears!)

Update: 127 registered attendees so far!

Coming to #FOCS2025 in Australia? Don't miss out on the satellite events! Just before: "A Celebration of TCS" (sites.google.com/view/celebra...) (Dec 11-13) Just after: "Trends in Approximation and Online Algorithms" sites.google.com/view/tao25wo... (Dec 18-19) Both free, held at #USyd!