CALL FOR PAPERS - 24th ESCAR EUROPE 2026

OVERVIEW AND TOPICS

Information technology is still the driving force behind most innovations in the automotive industry. Today, even compact vehicles often have dozens of interconnected microprocessors with up to several hundred megabytes of software and integrated communication capabilities to the outside world. For commercial vehicles such as trucks or high-end vehicles these numbers are much higher.

A crucial aspect of vehicles is their security. Whereas automotive safety is a relatively well established (if not necessarily well understood) field, the protection of automotive IT systems against malicious attacks has emerged significantly later. At the same time, security is nowadays considered a mandatory prerequisite for automotive IT applications. Therefore, automotive security contributes to both, reliability and safety, and has created an own ecosystem of approaches, tools, and services.

The escar conference has established itself as the premier forum for information, discussion and exchange of ideas and innovation in automotive security and attracts a broad audience from academia and industry.

Publication Call for Papers:

February 02, 2026

Submission deadline:

May 10, 2026

Acceptance notification:

August 3, 2026

Final paper due:

August 31, 2026

Information - Call for Papers - Program Committee

The program will include invited talks and submitted papers in security related areas such as:

  • Cyber Security Management Systems (including regulation, standardization, certification, interoperability, connection to other management systems, UN ECE R155, ISO/SAE 213434)

  • Security Technologies for systems and subsystems (like automotive ECUs and subcomponents, in-vehicle networks, hardware security, OTA,  access control, intrusion detection, monitoring, automotive SIEM, security functions, etc.)

  • Offensive security (car hacking, penetration testing, protocol analysis, automation, fuzzing, etc.)

  • Security in Software-Defined Vehicles (incl. aspects of ecosystems like changing value chains, continuous development, DevOps, application of new Technologies)

  • Architectures for securing specific vehicle applications and contexts (e.g., for highly-automated and autonomous vehicles, connected vehicles and V2X, electric vehicles and charging infrastructure, big data analysis, backend and cloud infrastructures, domain controllers, vehicle computers, zero trust architectures, etc.)

  • Automotive security engineering (like safety and security co-design, trust models and formal methods, development and validation tools, security (long-term) maintenance, security (credential and overall) management, incident handling and response, and security economics for the automotive domain, etc.)

  • Secure and privacy-friendly use of AI and machine learning in automotive contexts (e.g., generative AI, privacy-preserving machine learning, adversarial examples, security of automated driving mechanisms using AI)

  • Future security technologies and their application to automotive systems (e.g., Post-Quantum Cryptography, Trusted Execution Environments, Privacy-Enhancing Technologies, etc.)

  • Further automotive- and security-related topics (such as security usability, legal aspects, privacy and data protection, securityfor other transport systems like railway or aerospace, mobiltiy services like robotaxis, etc.)

INSTRUCTIONS FOR PAPER SUBMISSION

Theoretical/scientific articles, case studies and descriptions of real-world experiences are all welcome. All submissions will be peer-reviewed. Prospective authors should contact one of the steering committee members in case they have a doubt about the appropriateness of their submission for the conference. Two types of submissions are possible:


SCIENTIFIC TRACK: FULL PAPERS OF UP TO 15 PAGES

A submission in this track may be up to 15 pages long. The paper should include new research results, case studies, or state-of-the-art reports. For a full paper, we expect a significant novelty and originality in the presented results which must not have been published previously. These papers will undergo a full peer-review and will be included in the proceedings of escar and will have a citable DOI. Opt-out of the DOI and online publication is possible, and copyright remains fully with the author. The use of the template found on the submission page is mandatory. Submissions must be anonymous with no identifying features on the submissions (such as author names and obvious references).

PRESENTATION AND INDUSTRY TRACK:

This category is intended for contributions from industry, academia and other stakeholders with the primary goal of disseminating interesting content for the escar audience. This can also include previously published work that has already been presented at other conferences. The submission includes a PDF containing a two- to three-page description of the proposed presentation. The description should clearly highlight the content of the planned presentation and, in particular, its value to the escar community. Presentations should be content-focused and mere product or company presentations are discouraged. The use of the template found on the submission page is mandatory. Presentation abstracts will be part of the proceedings handed out at the conference but will not be published online. In this track submissions do not need to be anonymized. 

Important Note 1: Submissions not meeting above's requirements will be a desk reject. Marketing driven submissions and submissions that lack details to assess suitability for escar were not well received and almost always rejected in the past.

Important Note 2: All submissions must use the templates provided on the website. Templates are available either in Word or LaTeX format. 

Submissions must be in PDF format and will be accepted at our submission site.
 

Microsoft Word Templates (zip) LaTeX Templates (zip) SUBMIT HERE

EVENT ORGANIZER

isits AG International School of IT Security AG has established itself throughout Europe as a vocational education and training institute in the field of Cyber and IT Security.
Moreover, isits AG organizes symposiums, workshops and conferences.
isits AG initiated escar conference in 2003.

EVENT ORGANIZER USA

ETAS has been a mainstay in the automotive industry for thirty years, designing and producing hardware and software tools for engineers who develop and calibrate electronic control systems. Our tools are widely deployed in automotive and adjacent segments of the embedded industry.

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