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CP2026 Workshop on
Soft Constraints, Discrete Optimization, and Machine Learning
(Soft 2026)
July 24th, 2026
ISCTE, Lisbon, Portugal
Held in conjunction with the
Federated Logic Conference (FLoC'26)
and 32th International Conference on
Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2026)
https://hub.imt-atlantique.fr/soft2026
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Paper Submission Deadline: May 15th
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Call for Papers
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This workshop aims to bring together researchers on constraint
reasoning, optimization, and learning to present recent advances,
share ongoing work, and discuss future directions for hybrid
approaches that combine discrete optimization with machine learning
and data mining.
Topics of Interest (but are not restricted to):
- Max-SAT
- Max-SMT
- Markov Random Field
- Pseudo-Boolean Optimization
- Soft global constraints
- Weighted CSP
- Integer Programming
- Combining discrete optimization with machine learning for better
solver design.
- Data-driven strategies to guide search heuristics, branching, or
propagation.
- Using machine learning and data mining techniques to guide search.
- Integrating deep neural networks to improve solvers.
Submissions
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The aim of this workshop is to provide a forum where researchers
currently working in this area can exchange their ideas, discuss new
developments and explore possible future directions. Therefore, we
welcome and encourage three types of submission:
1) Work in progress and Original work. Submissions of an extended
abstract or a full paper, up to 15 pages in the LIPIcs format
(https://submission.dagstuhl.de/series/details/LIPIcs#author), about
unpublished ideas will be reviewed by a double-blind process and if
accepted and the authors agree the final version will be made
available on the workshop website.
2) Already published work. Authors who are interested in giving a
presentation to the workshop's audience may submit their work
non-anonymously while indicating where this work has been
published. We will only accept work which has been published in the
last calendar year (e.g., CPAIOR 2025, CP 2025, ECAI 2025, IJCAI 2025,
AAAI 2026, and any journal or conference held after May 2025).
3) Papers not selected for the main CP conference. Decisions about
acceptance of these papers will be based on their reviews.
Contributions should be submitted in the form of a PDF file, following
LIPIcs guidelines, using the link https://submissions.floc26.org/soft/
The type of submission as defined above should be clearly stated
during the submission. At least one author of each accepted paper must
attend the workshop.
This workshop is open to all members of the FLoC community. All
workshop participants must pay the workshop fee.
Important Dates
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Paper Submission deadline May 15th
Notification of acceptance May 28th
Early CP registration deadline June 1st
Final version deadline June 30th
Workshop Date July 24th
Organizers
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Simon de Givry
INRAE MIAT, Toulouse, France.
Email: simon.de-givry @ inrae.fr
Web: https://miat.inrae.fr/degivry
Samir Loudni
DAPI, IMT Atlantique, Nantes, France.
Email: samir.loudni @ imt-atlantique.fr
Web: https://cv.hal.science/samir-loudni
Program Committee
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Quentin Cappart, UCLouvain, Belgium and Polytechnique Montréal, Canada
Tias Gun, KU Leuven, Belgium
George Katsirelos, INRAE Paris Saclay, France
Elias B. Khalil, University of Toronto, Canada
Javier Larrosa, UPC, Barcelona, Spain
Jakob Nordström, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and Lund University, Sweden
Albert Oliveras, UPC, Barcelona, Spain
Thomas Schiex, INRAE Toulouse, France
Sylvie Thiebaux, LAAS, Toulouse, France