The annual conference of the ERCIM Working Group on Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems, FMICS, is the key conference at the intersection of industrial applications and formal methods. This year, the participants met in Liverpool, UK, on 3–4 September 2026.
The aim of FMICS is to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners interested in the development and application of formal methods in industry. It brings together scientists and engineers to exchange experience in their industrial use and promotes research and development to improve formal methods and tools for industrial applications. FMICS 2026 encouraged submissions combining formal methods with industrial practice, including their application in standardisation and industrial forums.
The conference was chaired by Kristin Yvonne Rozier (Iowa State University, USA) and Peter Gorm Larsen (Aarhus University, Denmark) and organised by the CONFEST 2026 general chairs David Purser and Patrick Totzke (University of Liverpool, UK) and their team as a co-located event, alongside CONCUR and QEST+FORMATS, as well as a number of pre- and post-conference workshops. FMICS 2026 overall attracted about 30 participants with larger audiences for the keynotes.
The international program committee (PC), with 25 members from 13 different countries, received 34 abstract submissions, resulting in 30 full-paper submissions from 17 different countries, and decided to accept 8 papers after a rigorous reviewing process. The program moreover included four excellent invited talks. Representing NASA JSC, USA, and sponsored by ERCIM, Dr. Julia Badger delivered a keynote talk on “Application of Formal Methods to Design and Verification of Autonomous Space Systems.” Dr. Colin O’Halloran, CTO of D-RiSQ Ltd, UK, and Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of York, UK, delivered a keynote talk on “Reducing Time to Market through Formal Methods.” In conjunction with CONFEST, Prof. Ezio Bartocci of TU Wien, Austria, delivered a keynote talk on “Reasoning About Probabilistic Loops, Moment by Moment” and Prof. Ichiro Hasuo of the National Institute of Informatics (NII) in Tokyo, Japan, delivered a keynote talk on “Category Theory for Fast Model Checking Algorithms.”
Following a tradition established over the years, Springer and EASST (European Association for the Study of Science and Technology) sponsored the FMICS Best Paper Awards. This year, the PC selected the contributions “Exploiting the Layout of a Railway Interlocking System for Path Reliability Evaluation” by Alessandro Fantechi, Gloria Gori and Jacopo Zecchi (University of Florence, Italy) and “Reasoning about Concurrent Loops and Recursion with Rely-Guarantee Rules” by Ian J. Hayes and Larissa Meinicke (The University of Queensland, Australia) and Cliff Jones (University of Newcastle, UK).
The PC chairs of FMICS 2027 are Rosemary Monahan (Maynooth University, Ireland) and Michael Leuschel (Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Germany). FMICS 2027 will take place in Athens, co-located with the 28th International Symposium on Formal Methods, which is organised by the general chairs Anna Philippou (University of Cyprus) and Petros Stefaneas (National Technical University of Athens, Greece) and their team on 18–22 October 2027.
Links:
FMICS 2026 conference website:
https://confest-2026.github.io/fmics/
ERCIM WG FMICS: https://fmics.inria.fr/
Reference:
P.G. Larsen and K.Y. Rozier (eds.), “Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems”, Proc. of the 31st Int. Conf. on Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems (FMICS’26), Liverpool, UK, 3–4 September 2026, LNCS, vol. 16967, Springer, 2026. https://link.springer.com/book/9783032368485
Please contact:
Maurice ter Beek, CNR-ISTI, Pisa, Italy