The 26th European Conference on Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimisation is a multidisciplinary conference that brings together researchers working on applications and theory of evolutionary computation methods and other metaheuristics for solving difficult combinatorial optimisation problems appearing in various industrial, economic, and scientific domains.

Successfully solved problems include, but are not limited to, multi-objective, uncertain, dynamic and stochastic problems in the context of scheduling, timetabling, network design, transportation and distribution, vehicle routing, stringology, graphs, satisfiability, energy optimisation, cutting, packing, planning, and search-based software engineering.

Successfully addressed theoretical and translational challenges encompass, but are not limited to, the development and analysis of novel (components of) evolutionary and other metaheuristic algorithms, work on neighbourhood and landscape structures, problem-agnostic and problem-specific variation operators, parallelisation strategies, and hybridizations.

The EvoCOP 2026 conference will be held together with EuroGP (the 29th European Conference on Genetic Programming), EvoMUSART (the 15th European conference on evolutionary and biologically inspired music, sound, art and design) and EvoApplications (the 29th European Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary Computation), in a joint event collectively known as EvoStar (Evo*).

Accepted papers will be published by Springer Nature in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. Previous proceedings can be found in the EvoCOP Conference Proceedings in SpringerLink.

Areas of Interest and Contributions

EvoCOP welcomes submissions in all experimental and theoretical aspects of evolutionary computation and other metaheuristics to combinatorial optimisation problems, including (but not limited to) the following areas:

  • Applications of metaheuristics to combinatorial optimization problems
  • Theoretical developments
  • Neighbourhoods and efficient algorithms for searching them
  • Variation operators for stochastic search methods
  • Constraint-handling techniques
  • Parallelisation and grid computing
  • Search space and landscape analyses
  • Comparisons between different (also exact) methods
  • Automatic algorithm configuration and design

Prominent examples of metaheuristics include (but are not limited to):

  • Evolutionary algorithms
  • Estimation of distribution algorithms
  • Swarm intelligence methods such as ant colony and particle swarm optimisation
  • Artificial immune systems
  • Local search methods such as simulated annealing, tabu search, variable neighbourhood search, iterated local search, scatter search and path relinking
  • Hybrid methods such as memetic algorithms
  • Matheuristics (hybrids of exact and heuristic methods)
  • Hyper-heuristics and autonomous search
  • Surrogate-model-based methods

Notice that, by tradition, continuous/numerical optimisation is *not* part of the topics of interest of EvoCOP. Interested authors might consider submitting to other EvoStar conferences such as EvoApplications.

Download the CFP in PDF here.

Conference Chairs

  • Martin Krejca
    Ecole Polytechnique, IP Paris, France
    martin.krejca(at)polytechnique.edu
  • Nelishia Pillay
    University of Pretoria, South Africa
    nelishia.pillay(at)up.ac.za

Submission Details

Paper submissions must be original and not published elsewhere. The submissions will be peer-reviewed by members of the program committee. The reviewing process will be double-blind, please omit information about the authors in the submitted paper.

Page limit: 14 + unlimited pages for references and acknowledgments

Follow these instructions to submit a paper.

Programme Committee

Maria João Alves, CeBER and Faculty of Economics of University of Coimbra / INESC Coimbra, Portugal
Denis Antipov, Sorbonne University, France
Matthieu Basseur, LISIC, Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale, France
Christian Blum, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Spain
Maxim Buzdalov, Aberystwyth University, United Kingdom
Arina Buzdalova, Aberystwyth University, United Kingdom
Josu Ceberio, University of the Basque Country, Spain
Marco Chiarandini, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
Francisco Chicano, University of Málaga, Spain
Carlos Coello Coello, CINVESTAV-IPN, Mexico
Carlos Cotta, Universidad de Málaga, Spain
Nguyen Dang, St Andrews University, United Kingdom
Bilel Derbel, CRIStAL (Univ. Lille), France
Marcos Diez García, Fujitsu Research of Europe Limited, Slough, United Kingdom
Karl Doerner, University of Vienna, Austria
Benjamin Doerr, Ecole Polytechnique, France
Carola Doerr, Sorbonne University, CNRS, France
John H. Drake, University of Leicester, United Kingdom
Talbi El-Ghazali, University of Lille, France
Jonathan Fieldsend, University of Exeter, United Kingdom
Carlos M. Fonseca, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Bernd Freisleben, University of Marburg, Germany
Carlos García-Martínez, Computing and Numerical Analysis Dept. Univ. of Córdoba, Spain
Adrien Goeffon, LERIA – Universite d’Angers, France
Andreia Guerreiro, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Jin-Kao Hao, University of Angers, France
Geir Hasle, SINTEF Digital, Norway
Mario Inostroza-Ponta, Departamento de Ingeniería Informática, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Chile
Ekhine Irurozki, Telecom Paris, France
Anja Jankovic, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Thomas Jansen, Aberystwyth University, United Kingdom
Andrzej Jaszkiewicz, Poznan University of Technology, Poland
Marie-Eleonore Kessaci, Université de Lille, Laboratoire CRIStAL, France
Ahmed Kheiri, University of Manchester, United Kingdom
Timo Kötzing, Hasso-Plattner-Institut, Germany
Dario Landa-Silva, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
Frederic Lardeux, LERIA – University of Angers, France
Johannes Lengler, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Rhydian Lewis, Cardiff University, United Kingdom
Manuel López-Ibáñez, The University of Manchester, United Kingdom
Gabriel Luque, University of Málaga, Spain
Yi Mei, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Krzysztof Michalak, Wroclaw University of Economics, Poland
Mustafa Misir, Duke Kunshan University, China
Frank Neumann, The University of Adelaide, Australia
Gabriela Ochoa, University of Stirling, United Kingdom
Pietro S Oliveto, Southern University of Science and Technology, China
Beatrice Ombuki-Berman, Brock University, Department of Computer Science, Canada
Andre Opris, University of Passau, Germany
Ender Özcan, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
Luis Paquete, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Mario Pavone, University of Catania, Italy
Francisco Pereira, Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Coimbra, Portugal
Leslie Pérez Cáceres, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile
Daniel Porumbel, CEDRIC, CNAM (Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers), Paris, France
Abraham Punnen, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Chao Qian, Nanjing University, China
Günther Raidl, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
María Cristina Riff, Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria, Chile
Eduardo Rodriguez-Tello, Cinvestav Unidad Tamaulipas, Mexico
Jonathan Rowe, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
Hana Rudová, Masaryk University, Czechia
Valentino Santucci, University for Foreigners of Perugia, Italy
Frédéric Saubion, LERIA – University of Angers, France
Andrea Schaerf, DPIA, University of Udine, Italy
Marcella Scoczynski Ribeiro Martins, Federal University of Technology – Parana, Brazil
Jonathan Shapiro, University of Manchester, United Kingdom
Thomas Stützle, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium
Dirk Sudholt, University of Passau, Germany
Andrew Sutton, University of Minnesota, United States
Sara Tari, Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale, France
Renato Tinós, University of São Paulo, Brazil
Niki van Stein, Leiden University, Netherlands
Nadarajen Veerapen, University of Lille, France
Sébastien Verel, Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale, France
Carsten Witt, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
Fangfang Zhang, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Weijie Zheng, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China