FOCS Workflow

The FOCS year is anchored in spring: the 2026 cycle closed submissions on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, 5:00 PM EDT (21:00 UTC) on focs26.hotcrp.com, for a conference in New York on November 8–11, 2026 (67th edition, checked 2026-07-08). As of that check date the cycle is in its post-submission phase: papers are with the program committee, notification and camera-ready dates were not yet published (待核实), and the workshop-proposal window is open. This skill manages both the live phases and the planning of the next attempt.

The 2026 cycle, seen from mid-July

Two live rules for the waiting months: first, if you discover a genuine error in a submitted proof, the honest channel is a note to the program chair, not a silent arXiv update that de-synchronizes the record; second, do not submit the same result elsewhere — SIGACT's simultaneous-submission policy governs this IEEE venue and stays in force until decisions arrive.

Backward plan for a FOCS 2027 attempt

FOCS 2027 had no published CFP, venue, or deadline at the check date (待核实). The historical rhythm — CFP in late winter, deadline at the start of April, conference in late autumn — is a pattern to plan by, not a fact to rely on. A realistic backward schedule against a presumed early-April deadline:

T-20 weeks (mid-Nov) : freeze the theorem list; run the significance test
                       (focs-topic-selection); pick FOCS vs. the STOC beat
T-14 weeks (early Jan): complete proofs of all main theorems; begin the
                       full-version write-up — at FOCS you submit the whole
                       paper, so writing cannot trail proving
T-8 weeks  (early Feb): STOC notifications land around now — merge any
                       resubmission into this plan within one week
T-5 weeks  (late Feb) : draft the first ten pages as a standalone document;
                       external read by a non-subarea theoretician
T-2 weeks  (mid-Mar)  : double-blind sweep, format floor check, external-
                       citation audit (focs-submission, focs-related-work)
T-3 days              : upload to HotCRP; verify the PDF has no copy/print
                       restrictions; re-upload cost is zero before the clock

Coordinating the two-flagship year

From the FOCS seat, STOC is the community's other deadline, five months out of phase. Practical coordination rules:

• Maintain one canonical LaTeX source per project with venue-agnostic theorem statements, so a FOCS rejection can be re-aimed at STOC without statement drift (see focs-reproducibility).
• Never hold a finished strong result half a year just to hit FOCS; theory moves by arXiv, and a posted preprint starts collecting concurrent-work complications immediately (see focs-related-work).
• Track the sibling clocks explicitly: STOC 2026 was due November 4, 2025 and met June 22–26, 2026; a FOCS 2026 rejection therefore has a natural next stop at the following STOC deadline (exact 2027 date 待核实).

Owner matrix for a multi-author paper

The most common workflow failure at this venue is not missing the deadline — it is arriving at T-2 weeks with proofs done and the ten-page front unwritten, because the team treated FOCS like a journal where the whole manuscript is read. Guard the T-5-week milestone above all others.

The workshop lane, run in parallel

The FOCS week has a second entrance that authors chronically forget: the Sunday workshop program. For 2026, proposals of two pages for 2.5-hour or 5-hour in-person workshops were due to the workshop chairs (Dakshita Khurana and Sam Hopkins) by July 31, 2026 AoE, with decisions on August 14. A workshop proposal is decided independently of your paper, gives your subarea a stage in New York even if the paper loses, and is one of the few FOCS levers still live during the review wait. If your group has three or more people working the same emerging direction, the proposal costs an afternoon and is usually worth it.

Rhythm failure modes, named

• The April surprise. Teams calibrated to AoE deadlines discover on the day that 5 PM EDT is nine hours earlier than 23:59 AoE. Convert the clock once, in writing, at T-2 weeks.
• The silent summer. No news between April and notification is the system working; interpreting silence as rejection and posting the paper to another proceedings venue violates the simultaneous-submission bar while the paper is still under review.
• The stale preprint. Referees will read your arXiv version. If it is three revisions behind the submission, they will referee the wrong proofs. Synchronize at submission time, then freeze.
• The double booking. The same result groomed for both FOCS and a specialist deadline "to see which hits" is a policy violation at this venue, not a strategy — sequence attempts instead (focs-topic-selection for the ordering logic).