STARS 2026

Motivation and Topics

Static and runtime verification are extremely successful approaches to software correctness. On the one hand, static verification requires access to program code and guarantees the absence of bugs, but may produce false positives. On the other hand, runtime verification can work without program code access and can be tailored to only report real bugs, but cannot find latent bugs before execution.

These techniques can complement each other. For instance, runtime monitors can be deployed to observe parts of a system that cannot be statically verified, or to enforce properties for which static verification may be too restrictive. This interplay is especially relevant for heterogeneous systems where some components cannot be statically analysed. Some combinations of static and runtime verification are already widely studied (for instance, gradual typing), but the broader design space is rich and worth deeper exploration.

STARS 2026 welcomes the submission of talk proposals and papers on theoretical and practical approaches that combine static and runtime verification, including but not limited to:

• Program analysis and verification
• Monitor synthesis
• Gradual typing
• Instrumentation techniques
• System adaptation, including shields, gateways, and interceptors
• Correct-by-construction techniques such as controlled system synthesis and supervisory control
• Fault detection, isolation, recovery, and repair
• Correctness specification and specification mining
• Applications to security and the Internet of Things
• Surveys, retrospective studies, position papers, benchmarking studies, empirical evaluations, and tool papers related to the above

STARS 2026 is partially supported by the Independent Research Fund Denmark project Hyben.

Invited Speakers

• Nobuko Yoshida - University of Oxford, UK
• Roland Kuhn - RKSW UG, Germany
• Davide Ancona - Università degli Studi di Genova, Italy

Organisers

• Alceste Scalas - Technical University of Denmark (alcsc@dtu.dk)
• Adrian Francalanza - University of Malta (adrian.francalanza@um.edu.mt)

You can contact us at: stars2026@easychair.org

Programme Committee

• Elli Anastasiadi - Aalborg University, Denmark
• Giorgio Audrito - Università di Torino, Italy
• Laura Bocchi - University of Kent, UK
• Raymond Hu - Queen Mary University of London, UK
• Roland Kuhn - RKSW UG, Germany
• Stefan Marr - Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
• Stefan K. Muller - University of Connecticut, USA
• Sung-Shik Jongmans - University of Groningen, Netherlands