HistoCrypt addresses all aspects of historical cryptography/cryptanalysis and history of cryptology, including work in closely related disciplines (history, history of sciences, computer science, Artificial Intelligence, computational linguistics, image processing) with relevance to historical ciphertexts and codes.

Presentation

The International Conference on Historical Cryptology (HistoCrypt 2026) invites submissions of papers to its annual conference. The conference will be held on June 22-24, 2026, at the Université de Picardie Jules Verne (Amiens, France).

HistoCrypt addresses all aspects of historical cryptography/cryptanalysis and history of cryptology. “History” is understood in the broadest sense (ancient to contemporary history). The conference’s subjects include, but are not limited to:

• Use(s) and practice(s) of cryptography in the military, diplomacy, business, and other areas
• Encryption methods and their evolution over time
• Other techniques of information dissimulation (various steganographic techniques : invisible ink, steganographic printing, knot codes, ...)
• Cipher machines
• Roots of modern ciphers in historical cryptology
• Automatic methods including AI in the field of historical cryptology
• Linguistic aspects of cryptology
• Cryptanalysis of historical cryptograms
• Cryptanalytic methods and algorithms applied to historical cryptograms
• Unsolved historical cryptograms
• Cryptographers and cryptanalysts over history
• Influence of cryptography on the course of history
• Cryptology within the history of sciences
• Representations of cryptology (literature, movies, education, ...)

We particularly encourage early-stage researchers (PhDs and postdocs) to submit their research.

Submissions and review process

We invite paper submissions in two distinct tracks:

• regular papers up to 10 pages (excluding references) on substantial, original, and unpublished research, including evaluation results, where appropriate
• short papers up to 4 pages (excluding references) on smaller, focused contributions, work in progress, negative results, surveys, tutorials, or opinion pieces

All submissions will receive at least two double-blind reviews by experts in the field.

Submissions that violate fundamental scientific requirements will be returned. This includes revealing the author(s) on the title page or through self-references, including no (adequate) references, or presenting content that has already been published.

Presentations of accepted papers can be either oral or poster. Authors can make suggestions as to the presentation format; final decisions will be taken by the programme committee. Participation in the conference is mandatory for at least one author of each accepted paper.

Papers will be included in the HistoCrypt 2026 proceedings (publication before the conference).

Instructions for submission

All submissions must follow the HistoCrypt 2026 style files, which will be available on the HistoCrypt 2026 website. There are styles for LaTeX (preferred) and MS Word. Submissions shall be anonymous.

Papers must be submitted digitally, in PDF, and uploaded through EasyChair. The submission will close on January 31 [CET]. The link to the submission page is published on the HistoCrypt 2026 website.

Submission online

Schedule

• Submission opens: December 1, 2025

• Paper submission: January 31, 2026

• Notification of acceptance: April 3, 2026
• Camera ready manuscripts: April 30, 2026
• Main conference: June 22-24, 2026

Programme Commitee

Reviewing of submissions and selection of the conference programme will be managed by the HistoCrypt 2026 programme committee.

• Eugen Antal, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava (Slovakia) - area chair: cryptanalysis
• Camille Desenclos, Université de Picardie Jules Verne (Amiens, France) - co-programme chair: history of cryptology (early modern)
• John F. Dooley, Knox College (Galesburg, USA) - area chair: history of cryptology (modern), security
• Alicia Fornes, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (Spain) - area chair: computer vision
• Beata Megyesi, Stockholm university (Sweden) - area chair: computational linguistics
• Cécile Pierrot, Université de Lorraine, CNRS, Inria (Nancy, France) - co-programme chair: cryptanalysis