Call for Papers

ACM SIGSAC Conference on Post-Quantum and Quantum-based Security https://www.pqqs.org
November 2–4, 2026
San Jose, California, USA

The ACM Conference on Post-Quantum and Quantum-based Security (PQQS) is a premier forum dedicated to research at the intersection of cybersecurity and quantum technologies. The inaugural edition of PQQS establishes a new international forum dedicated to the theory and practice of information security in the emerging quantum era. The conference brings together researchers and practitioners from academia, industry, and government to advance both foundational and applied aspects of classical (including post-quantum and information-theoretic) and quantum approaches to information security, and to explore novel applications of quantum information. It aims to provide a unified venue for rigorous, forward-looking research addressing the challenges of securing information in a quantum-enabled world. The conference spans quantum-enabled security systems, quantum-safe security approaches (including post-quantum and information-theoretic methods), and security of quantum systems, bringing together perspectives from theory, systems, deployment, and standardization.

PQQS’26 welcomes high-quality original research contributions spanning classical post-quantum security, information-theoretic and quantum cryptography, secure systems and infrastructures, transition and deployment challenges, and standards and ecosystem readiness. We especially encourage submissions that connect strong foundations with practical relevance and real-world deployment.

Topics of Interest

Topics include, but are not limited to:

1. Foundations, Cryptanalysis, and Cryptographic Design

  • Post-quantum cryptography: lattice-based, code-based, multivariate, isogeny-inspired, hash-based, and symmetric-key approaches
  • Security reductions, formal models, and provable security for quantum-safe systems
  • Cryptanalysis of post-quantum and quantum-resistant schemes
  • Information-theoretic cryptography and long-term security
  • Hybrid cryptographic designs combining classical, post-quantum, and information-theoretic techniques
  • Authentication, key establishment, signatures, encryption, and advanced cryptographic protocols for the quantum era
  • Efficient implementations and performance trade-offs for quantum-safe cryptography

2. Quantum Cryptographic and Communication Systems

  • Quantum cryptography: foundations, design, and analysis
  • Quantum key distribution (QKD) and quantum communication networks
  • Security of quantum devices and hardware implementations
  • Security of quantum compilers and quantum cloud platforms
  • Verification and formal models for quantum protocols
  • Quantum-secure network architectures
  • Quantum randomness generation and certification
  • Side-channel and implementation attacks on quantum systems
  • Integration of classical and quantum cryptographic infrastructures

3. Systems and Infrastructure Security in the Quantum Era

  • Secure migration of large-scale distributed systems
  • Post-quantum security in 5G/6G, edge, and satellite networks
  • Quantum-safe PKI and identity management
  • Blockchain and distributed ledger security in a post-quantum world
  • Consensus protocols and cryptoeconomic security under quantum adversaries
  • Secure firmware, hardware accelerators, and trusted execution under post-quantum assumptions
  • Cloud and data-center cryptographic transition

4. Deployment, Policy, and Ecosystem Readiness

  • Security risk assessment and transition planning
  • Economic and operational impacts of quantum migration
  • Certification, compliance, and regulatory frameworks
  • Government and industry migration case studies
  • Tools, benchmarks, testbeds, and experimental platforms
  • Standardization, interoperability, and deployment guidance

Industry-Academia Day

PQQS’26 will feature a dedicated industry-academia day on the final day of the conference. This day will emphasize real-life deployments, migration experiences, products and platforms, standards, policies and compliance regulations, ecosystem readiness, and lessons learned from academia, industry, and government practices and collaboration.

The day will include invited talks, panels, demos, and lightning talks by academia, industry, and government organizations.

Submission Categories

Regular Papers

Regular papers should present original research results that have not been previously published and are not simultaneously under review by another venue with published proceedings. Regular papers must be no longer than 12 pages in the prescribed format, excluding references and clearly marked appendices.

Poster Papers

PQQS’26 will also accept poster submissions. Poster papers may present late-breaking results, novel ideas, ongoing work, system prototypes, implementation experience, datasets, benchmarks, or emerging research directions of interest to the PQQS community.

Poster submissions will be 2 pages, including references, and will follow the same anonymization rules as regular papers. If accepted, they will be presented at the conference poster session. For accepted posters, inclusion in the proceedings is conditional on presenting the poster at the conference poster session.

Review Process

  • PQQS’26 will use a single-round review process.
  • There will be one round of reviewing for the research track.
  • Submissions will be reviewed by the Program Committee and, when needed, by external reviewers.
  • There will be no rebuttal phase.
  • Decisions will be based on originality, technical quality, significance, clarity, and relevance to PQQS.
  • Accepted papers may be subject to revision requests from the Program Chairs before final publication.
  • Accepted papers may be assigned to a shepherd who will oversee the finalization of the paper. The final version of each shepherded paper requires the approval of the shepherd.

Submission Policies

Originality and Concurrent Submissions

Submissions must describe original, unpublished work. A submission must not substantially overlap with any paper that has been published or accepted for publication, or that is simultaneously under review at a journal, conference, or workshop with published proceedings.

Authors should clearly distinguish the submission from any closely related prior or concurrent work.

Anonymity

Submissions will be reviewed under a double-blind review process. Authors must ensure that their papers are properly anonymized: author names and affiliations must be omitted, self-references should be written in the third person, and submissions that are not adequately anonymized may be rejected without review.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors must declare conflicts of interest at submission. PQQS’26 will follow the ACM conflict-of-interest policy.

Formatting

Submissions must be made in PDF using the official ACM conference format, using the ACM proceedings templates.

Regular papers: limited to 12 pages excluding references and clearly marked appendices (appendices are supplementary materials and may not be used for review by the reviewers).

Poster papers: must follow the same format as regular papers, and are limited to 2 pages in total including references.

Supplementary Material and Artifacts

Authors may submit supplementary material to support the evaluation of their work. Supplementary material may include artifacts, appendices, full proofs of theorems, software, datasets, and other supporting content. Such material is intended to aid evaluation; however, reviewers are not required to read it, and the paper must be self-contained in presenting its main contributions and technical arguments.

Ethics and Responsible Research

Submissions involving human subjects, user data, operational measurements, vulnerability discovery, or other sensitive experiments that may or may not include AI in some form should include a discussion of ethical considerations, appropriate permissions, as applicable.

Authorship and Generative AI Tools

PQQS’26 will follow ACM’s authorship policy. Generative AI tools may not be listed as authors. If such tools are used to create content, that use should be disclosed as required by ACM policy, and the human authors remain fully responsible for the submission.

Reviewing Policy

PQQS’26 will follow the ACM peer review policy.

Publication Policy

PQQS’26 will follow the ACM publication policy.

Scope and Evaluation Criteria

All PQQS’26 submissions will be evaluated on their merits, as applicable, based on the following criteria:

  • Originality
  • Technical quality
  • Significance
  • Clarity of presentation
  • Relevance to the goals and scope of PQQS

Papers that are out of scope may be desk-rejected at the discretion of the Program Chairs.

Proceedings

All accepted and invited papers will appear in the ACM conference proceedings.

Presentation and Registration

At least one author of each accepted and invited paper, including poster papers, must register for the full conference and present the work.

Important Dates

  • Abstract registration deadline: July 19, 2026
  • Regular paper submission deadline: July 26, 2026
  • Poster paper submission deadline: August 24, 2026
  • Author notification: September 15, 2026

All deadlines are 11:59 p.m. Anywhere on Earth (AoE / UTC−12) unless otherwise noted.

Submission Site

The submission site will be announced soon.

Organizing Committee

General Chairs

  • Elisa Bertino

Program Chairs

  • Reihaneh Safavi-Naini
  • Ashish Kundu

Program Committee

Program Committee will be announced soon.

Contact

For questions regarding submissions, please contact: pqqs2026@gmail.com