Conference Scope

Since its inception in 1998, ANTS has been a highly selective, single-track meeting that provided a forum for discussing advances in the field of swarm intelligence. It solicits submissions presenting significant, original research from researchers and practitioners of any area related to swarm intelligence.

Swarm intelligence is an interdisciplinary and rapidly evolving field, rooted in the study of self-organizing processes in both natural and artificial systems. Researchers from disciplines ranging from ethology to statistical physics have developed models that explain collective phenomena, such as decision-making in social insect colonies and collective movements in human crowds. Swarm-inspired algorithms and methods have proven effective in solving complex optimization problems and creating multi-robot and networked systems of unparalleled resilience, adaptability and scalability. Applications of swarm intelligence continue to grow and become increasingly critical for addressing societal challenges such as environmental sustainability, food security, health, and global conflicts.

The 2026 edition’s theme is "reaching beyond - swarm intelligence across systems, disciplines, and communities". The meeting seeks to encourage new perspectives, help bridge traditional boundaries and enable open debate on what could be ambitious, exploratory, and groundbreaking endeavors to embark on.

Relevant Research Areas

• Theoretical foundations of swarm intelligence and collective phenomena
• Modeling and analysis of self-organizing systems in nature, including many-particle systems, cellular systems, insect colonies, bird flocks, and human crowds
• Decision making in large groups e.g. consensus dynamics, mean-field games, social choice theory
• Swarm robotics, including colloidal systems, micro-robots, drones, and other autonomous vehicles
• Swarm optimization algorithms, including ACO, PSO, ABC
• LLMs and GenAI-in-the-loop systems in combination with swarm intelligence
• Large-scale distributed networks, such as smart dust, smart cities, or social networks
• Robotic materials and modular robots capable of self-repair, self-assembly or shape-shifting
• Distributed learning, coordination, and control in many-agent systems
• Human-centered swarm intelligence and human-swarm interaction
• Sustainable technologies for artificial and bio-hybrid swarms
• Creative and expressive uses of swarm principles in art, design and education
• Benchmarking and reproducibility in swarm intelligence research
• Ethical and societal implications of applications of swarm intelligence research
• Applications of swarm intelligence to real-world challenges

Important Dates

• Submission deadline: November 10, 2025
• Notification of acceptance: January 30, 2026
• Camera ready copy: February 13, 2026
• Conference: June 8-10, 2026

The Proceedings are published by Springer-Nature in their Lecture Notes in Computer Science LNCS series.

The journal Swarm Intelligence will publish a special issue dedicated to ANTS 2026 that will contain extended versions of selected research works presented at the conference.

• Conference Venue
• Accommodation
• Restaurants

• Plenary talks
• Perspective Talks
• Program
• Registration

• Submission
• Publication

Initial submission instructions (main track)

Submissions may be a maximum of 11 pages, excluding references, when typeset in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) LaTeX template. Submissions should be a minimum of 7 full pages.

This strict page limit includes figures, tables, and all supplementary sections (e.g., Acknowledgements). The only exclusion from the page limit is the reference list, which should be of any length suitable to adequately position the paper with respect to the state of the art.

Papers should be prepared in English, in the Springer LNCS LaTeX style, using the default font and font size. Authors should consult Springer’s authors’ guidelines and use their proceedings template for LaTeX, for the preparation of their papers. Please download the Proceedings (LNCS) LaTex template package (zip, 318 kB) and authors' guidelines (pdf, 244 kB) directly from the Springer website.

Submissions that do not respect these guidelines will not be considered.

Note: Authors may find it convenient that Springer LNCS LaTex templates are available in Overleaf.

The initial submission must be in PDF format.

Please note that in the camera-ready phase, authors of accepted papers will need to submit both a compiled PDF and all source files (including LaTeX files and figures).

The camera-ready phase will have more detailed formatting requirements than the initial submission phase.

Submission process

Submitted papers will be peer-reviewed on the basis of technical quality, relevance, significance, and clarity. If a submission is not accepted as a full length paper, it may still be accepted either as a short paper or as an extended abstract. In such cases, authors will be asked to reduce the length of the submission accordingly. Authors of all accepted papers will be asked to execute revisions, based on the reviewers’ comments.

Use of large language models

(adapted from here) We welcome authors to use any tool that is suitable for preparing high-quality papers and research. However, we ask authors to keep in mind two important criteria. First, we expect authors to document their methodology clearly for upholding scientific rigorousness and transparency standards. The use of LLMs in implementing the method should be described in the experimental setup section (or equivalent) if it is an important, original, or non-standard component of the approach. The use of spell checkers and grammar suggestions, programming aid for editing purposes does not need to be documented. Second, authors are responsible for the entire content of the paper, including all text, figures, and references. Therefore, while authors are welcome to use any tool they wish for preparing and writing the paper, they must ensure that all content is correct and original. All authors should take full responsibility to understand the advantages and limitations of using any tools and resources when preparing their scientific publications. Some (including free) tools may retain input data for further model training purposes, so authors should exercise caution to account for individual privacy considerations. High-level instructions could potentially result in hallucinations when generating plots, risking scientific integrity. It is the author’s responsibility to verify the tools are used in a scientifically responsible manner.

The Proceedings are published by Springer-Nature in their Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.

The journal Swarm Intelligence will publish a special issue dedicated to ANTS 2026 that will contain extended versions of selected research works presented at the conference.