These instructions are for authors of accepted papers at the 35th USENIX Security Symposium. If you wish to submit a paper or deliver a talk at another upcoming USENIX event, please review the open Calls for Papers and Calls for Participation for our upcoming USENIX conferences.
Update of May 2026: Information about presentations for authors of accepted papers are now available in section 15 below. Instructions for Enigma Track speakers are also available.
Visa
If you need an invitation letter to apply for a United States visa to attend the conference, please contact the Conference Department as soon as possible. Visa applications are reportedly taking more than three months to process. Please identify yourself as a presenter or an author, and include your mailing address in your email request.
Instructions for Authors of Refereed Papers
- Final Papers deadline. A printable PDF of your paper is due on or before the final paper deadlines listed below.
- Cycle 1: Upload your final paper to the submission system by Thursday, January 15, 2026.
- Cycle 2: Upload your final paper to the submission system by Thursday, June 11, 2026.
- Maximum page length. Final papers should be no longer than 20 pages, including bibliography and any appendices. Exceptional requests for additional pages should be emailed to [email protected] and will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
- Paper format. Papers should be typeset in two-column format using 10-point type on 12-point (single-spaced) leading, in a text block 7" wide x 9" deep, with .33" inter-column space, formatted for 8.5" x 11" paper.
- Looking for templates? Authors must use the USENIX Security template and style files when preparing their final paper.
- Artifacts. Authors are required to openly share their research artifacts at submission time. For any artifacts provided at submission time, paper acceptance is conditional on continued public availability of these artifacts. Following conditional paper acceptance, there will be an opportunity to provide a non-anonymized camera-ready link(s) to the paper's artifacts. Artifact availability at the camera-ready link(s) will be re-verified by the Artifact Evaluation Committee. Optionally, authors of accepted papers are encouraged to register their artifacts to also be checked for functionality and reproducibility. Please see the Call for Artifacts for additional details and submission instructions.
- Ethics considerations and open science. Final papers must include two appendices titled "Ethical Considerations" and "Open Science." These appendices must appear immediately following the main body of the paper, but before the references section and any additional appendices, and may each contain one page of text.
- Ethics considerations: This appendix must detail the authors’ stakeholder-based ethics analysis or must justify the use of an alternative approach to considering the ethics of their work. See the Ethics Guidelines for more information.
- Open science: This appendix must include the latest version of the open science section. If authors were asked to submit a new open-science section as part of the author response or re-verification of availability, then that content should appear in the final paper, edited if needed to address reviewers' comments and revision requirements. This appendix must list all artifacts necessary to evaluate the contribution of the paper and make clear how the review committees can access each artifact.
- Permanent access: Artifacts should be published on a platform that provides persistent access. See the Call for Artifacts for hosting recommendations.
- Unavailable artifacts: Authors must explain why artifacts will not be openly shared.
- Embed all fonts in your final paper PDF.
- Make searchable your final paper PDF. This typically does not require authors to do anything additional, as PDFs generated via tools like pdfLaTeX are typically searchable. None of the text in the body of the paper, beyond words that might appear in illustrations, should be rendered as images.
- Page numbers must be suppressed on your final paper PDF.
- Certify your final paper's title, author, and abstract in HotCRP. The final PDF's title and author information, including author order and affiliation, and the abstract, must exactly match the information entered into the HotCRP submission system. Please update the information in HotCRP as necessary, then check the certification checkbox. Please note: if you make any changes after you check the certification checkbox, you will need to check the box again.
- Sign the consent to publish form. Each author must sign a consent to publish form, which allows USENIX to publish the paper as well as any slides, audio, and/or video of your presentation. USENIX makes these freely available as part of our commitment to open access. Please review and e-sign the form. If you are the lead author, please be sure all of your co-authors sign a form as well.
- Use of images, audio, and video in your materials. It is very important that you secure permission to use copyright-protected materials in your slide deck, paper, presentation video, or any other materials used at our event or submitted for publication. Even when using an item with a Creative Commons license, you must read and comply with the terms of the license.
USENIX receives copyright infringement notices from time to time, resulting from authors or speakers using copyright-protected materials without proper licensing or attribution. When this happens, we have to unpublish the work in question until/unless the issue is resolved. Licensing fees may be incurred, even when the work is unpublished, and USENIX will bill the author or speaker for any costs incurred. When possible, USENIX will refer the complainant directly to the author or speaker, who will be solely responsible for resolving the complaint. - Embargo requests. All papers will be available online to registered attendees before the symposium. Authors may request an embargo for their papers by the deadlines listed below. Please specify in your request what parts of your paper require an embargo (e.g., PDF, abstract, title, and/or author list).
- Cycle 1: Thursday, February 12, 2026
- Cycle 2: Thursday, July 9, 2026
- Registration. As noted in the Call for Papers, at least one of the authors must register to attend the symposium at full price (i.e., not the student rate) and to present the paper; USENIX members at the Sustainer level and higher may apply their membership discounts to their registrations. If an author plans to present more than one paper, one full-price registration will still be required for each paper. Registration information will be available on the USENIX Security '26 website in May. Authors will also receive information about registration via email from the Conference Department. If the symposium registration fee poses a hardship for the presenter of an accepted paper, please contact [email protected].
- Presentations. USENIX Security '26 will follow the USENIX Security '25 approach to presenting accepted papers as detailed below:
Some accepted papers will be presented as longer talks of 12 minutes; others will be shorter talks of three minutes. The program co-chairs will assign longer talk slots to all papers that win awards as well as to others selected randomly. All other papers will receive shorter talk slots. The program co-chairs will notify you via email by mid-June of your presentation length.
All accepted papers will additionally be presented as posters in the same thematically organized sessions as their talks; talks will occur first, followed by poster discussions. There will be no live questions and answers following the talks. All Q&A will take place during the discussion portion of each session, when presenters will be stationed at their posters. Presentation of posters is mandatory, as one-third of each session will consist of poster discussion. See the USENIX Instructions for Poster Session Presenters for guidance on preparing your poster.
Authors must submit their talk slides in advance, which is a change from all past USENIX Security Symposia. Prepare your slides for a 16:9 aspect ratio in PDF and submit them by Wednesday, July 22, following the instructions you will receive via email. Do not embed video or audio in your slides. Each session will include a shared laptop with slide advancer, projector, screen, and handheld microphone. All slides will be loaded onto the shared laptop in advance.
Refereed paper talks will not be recorded. Instead, authors of accepted papers will be invited to upload pre-recorded 15–20-minute video presentations, which will be published on the USENIX Security '26 website after the symposium. Instructions for preparing and submitting your video will be available in early August. Preparation of uploaded videos will be optional. - Designate your paper presenter. The authors of each paper must designate one co-author to present the paper at the symposium via the Presenter Information form, which will be sent via email by the program co-chairs at a later date.
If the paper presenter changes before the event, you are responsible for notifying the Conference Department so they can confirm that the new presenter is registered for the event. This information is required to ensure that all USENIX Security '26 paper presenters are accounted for on the day of their presentation.
Instructions for Enigma Track Speakers
- Registration. The Conference Department will contact you with instructions for registering online.
- Sign the consent to publish form. All presenters must sign a consent to publish form, which allows USENIX to publish any slides, audio, and/or video of your presentation. USENIX makes these freely available as part of our commitment to open access. Enigma Track talks will be recorded. Please review and e-sign the form.
- Presentations. Plan for your talk to be 20 minutes in length; 10 minutes of Q&A with the audience will follow each presentation.
Contact
If you have questions, please contact the USENIX Security '26 Program Co-Chairs, Elissa Redmiles and Ben Stock, or the USENIX Production Department.