CFP - Soft Constraints, Discrete Optimization, and Machine Learning (SOFT'26)

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

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a full paper, up to 15 pages in the LIPIcs format (https://submission.dagstuhl.de/series/details/LIPIcs#author), about unpublished ideas will be reviewed by a double-blind process and if accepted and the authors agree the final version will be made available on the workshop website.

1) 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).

1) 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

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

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