Submission

The Metaheuristics International Conference (MIC) series was established in 1995 and this is its 16th edition! MIC focuses on the progress of the area of Metaheuristics and their applications and provides an opportunity to the international research community to discuss recent research results, to develop new ideas and collaborations, and to meet old friends and make new ones in relaxed atmosphere. MIC 2026 strives to propose a high-quality program that will be completed by a number of invited talks, tutorials, workshops and special sessions.

Research Areas

MIC 2026 solicits contributions dealing with any aspect of metaheuristics. Typical, but not exclusive, topics of interest are:

• Metaheuristic techniques such as tabu search, simulated annealing, iterated local search, variable neighborhood search, memory-based optimization, dynamic local search, evolutionary algorithms, memetic algorithms, ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, scatter search, path relinking, etc.
• Techniques that enhance the usability and increase the potential of metaheuristic algorithms such as reactive search mechanisms for self-tuning, offline metaheuristic algorithm configuration techniques, algorithm portfolios, parallelization of metaheuristic algorithms, etc.
• Empirical and theoretical research in metaheuristics including large-scale experimental analyses, algorithm comparisons, new experimental methodologies, engineering methodologies for metaheuristic algorithms, search space analysis, theoretical insights into properties of metaheuristic algorithms, etc.
• High-impact applications of metaheuristics in fields such as bioinformatics, electrical and mechanical engineering, telecommunications, sustainability, business, scheduling and timetabling. Particularly welcome are innovative applications of metaheuristic algorithms that have a potential of pushing research frontiers.
• Contributions on the combination of metaheuristic techniques with those from other areas, such as integer programming, constraint programming, machine learning, etc.
• Contributions on the use of metaheuristic techniques in machine learning and deep learning for finetuning and neural architecture search, etc.
• Challenging applications areas such as continuous, mixed discrete-continuous, multi-objective, stochastic, or dynamic problems.

Submission Details

MIC 2026 accepts submissions in three different formats:

1. Regular paper: novel and original research contributions of a maximum of 15 pages (LNCS format)
2. Short paper: extended abstract of novel research works of 6 pages (LNCS format)
3. Oral presentation: high-quality manuscripts that have recently, within the last year, been submitted or accepted for journal publication.

All submitted papers will undergo a review process. All papers must be prepared using Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) template (available here), and must be submitted in PDF using the easychair system at this link.

Please note that each participant may give only one oral presentation. However, participants may be co-authors of multiple contributions, provided that different co-authors present them. Moreover, to include the paper in the proceedings, at least one author of each contribution must register for the conference.

Proceedings and special issue

Accepted papers in categories 1 and 2 will be published as post-proceedings in Lecture Notes in Computer Science series by Springer.

Accepted contributions of category 3 will be considered for oral presentations at the conference, and will not be included into the LNCS proceedings. An electronic book instead will be prepared by the MIC 2026 organizing committee, and made available on the website.

In addition, a post-conference special issue in Journal of Heuristics will be considered for the significantly extended and revised versions of selected accepted papers from categories 1 and 2.