ICFEM 2025: Call for Papers

The 26th International Conference on Formal Engineering Methods (ICFEM 2025) is an internationally leading conference series in formal methods and software engineering, serving as an international forum for researchers and practitioners applying formal methods to practical applications. ICFEM is interested in work that has been incorporated into real production systems, as well as in theoretical work that promises to bring practical and tangible benefits.

This year, ICFEM 2025 will be held in Hangzhou, China, from 10 - 13 November 2025. We welcome submissions from researchers and practitioners worldwide to advance the field of formal methods and software engineering.

Scope and Topics

Authors are invited to submit high-quality technical papers describing original and unpublished work in all theoretical aspects of software engineering. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Formal specification and modeling
• Formal approaches to fault prevention and detection
• Abstraction, refinement, and evolution
• Formal verification and validation
• Integration of formal methods and testing
• Integration of formal methods and review
• SAT/SMT solvers for software analysis and testing
• Practical formal methods
• Applications of formal methods
• Formal approaches to software maintenance
• Formal approaches to safety-critical system development
• Supporting tools for formal methods
• Formal methods for agile development
• Formal methods for human-machine pair programming
• Formal methods for and with AI
• Formal methods for Cyber-physical systems and IoT
• Formal methods for security
• Formal certification of products
• Industrial case studies

Important Dates (AoE)

IMPORTANT: All deadlines are 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth, UTC-12)

1. Abstract Submission: June 11, 2025
2. Full Paper Submission: June 15, 2025
3. Acceptance Notification: August 1, 2025
4. Camera-ready versions: August 20, 2025
5. Conference dates: November 10-13, 2025

Submission and Publication

Submission should be done through the ICFEM 2025 submission page: Access submission portal. Please select the appropriate track when submitting your paper.

General Information

• As in previous years, the proceedings will be published in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.
• Papers should be written in English in the Springer's LNCS format. Formatting style files and further guidelines can be found at the Springer website.
• Authors are encouraged to add line numbers to their submissions (e.g., using the lineno LaTeX package).
• Authors are encouraged to upload their artifacts to an archive such as Zenodo or GitHub to ensure reproducibility and availability.

Main Conference Paper

• Submissions should not exceed 16 pages (excluding references and appendix) in Springer's LNCS format.
• Each submission will undergo a rigorous single-blind peer-review process by at least three experts.
• Invited extended versions of selected papers will be recommended to a special issue of Formal Aspects of Computing after the conference proceedings.
• The best software linked to a paper will be recommended to a special issue of the Software track of Elsevier's Science of Computer Programming journal.

Journal-First Presentations

• This track invites authors to submit a short proposal for their recently published journal articles.
• Accepted papers are from specific journals (ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, Formal Aspects of Computing, Formal Methods in System Design, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Theoretical Computer Science).
• The associated journal paper must have been accepted no earlier than Jan 1st, 2024.
• The paper must be in the scope of the conference and report completely new research results or novel contributions.
• The paper must not have been presented at, or under consideration for, journal-first programs of other conferences.
• Conference Attendance Expectation: At least one author must register for and attend the full technical conference to present the paper (in person, unless impossible due to travel limitations). Journal-first papers will be listed in the conference program but not in the ICFEM proceedings.
• When submitting: Select the ICFEM 2025 Journal First Track in the submission system.

Doctoral Symposium

• The Doctoral Symposium is an international forum for PhD students in formal methods for software, hardware, and system development.
• It provides an opportunity for PhD students to present and discuss their research in a constructive and critical scientific atmosphere, receiving feedback from established researchers.
• Submissions should include: Title, author name and affiliation, context and motivation, problem statement and related work, proposed solutions, current research efforts, significance, methodology, results, analysis, and future work. The paper should be prepared using the LNCS format and submitted in PDF format via EasyChair.
• Submission Categories:
  • (a) 2-page extended abstracts: These will not be included in the ICFEM proceedings.
  • (b) 6-page papers: These will be published in the LNCS volume of Springer as part of the main ICFEM proceedings.
• Authors with accepted submissions are expected to attend the Doctoral Symposium in person to present their work. A discounted registration fee will be announced later.
• When submitting: Select the ICFEM 2025 Doctoral Symposium Track in the submission system.

Sponsors

TBD

Workshop

PIFI Day on the Design of AI-Enabled Safety-Critical Systems will be held from 7 - 11 November 2025, in Hangzhou, China.