The theme of ICIOT 2026 is:

Agentic AI as a Service for the Internet of Things

Agentic AI enables IoT systems to move from predefined automation toward adaptive perception, decision-making, coordination, and action.

For the ICIOT community, the central question is:

How can IoT systems enable AI agents to perceive, reason, coordinate, and act across connected physical environments safely and dependably?

An agentic IoT system may interpret data from multiple sensors, understand the operational context, select appropriate devices or services, construct an action plan, coordinate actuators, monitor the result, and revise its behavior when conditions change.

Agentic AI is transforming the Internet of Things:

• From connected devices to coordinated intelligent things

• From data collection to closed-loop perception, decision, and action

• From reactive automation to goal-driven behavior

• From isolated IoT applications to interoperable ecosystems

• From centralized control to distributed and context-aware coordination

• From device availability to safe and dependable task completion

• From fixed rules to adaptive but accountable operation

These capabilities also introduce significant risks. Agents that control physical devices must operate within explicit safety boundaries, permissions, policies, and human-oversight mechanisms. Their actions must be observable, explainable, interruptible, and auditable.

ICIOT 2026 invites researchers and practitioners to develop the sensing, communication, coordination, security, and system foundations required for trustworthy agentic interaction with the physical world.

All submissions must report original and unpublished work and must not be under review elsewhere at the time of submission.

Each manuscript will be reviewed by at least three program committee members. Papers will be evaluated according to:

• Relevance to ICIOT

• Originality and significance

• Technical or practical quality

• Strength of evaluation

• Clarity and organization

• Reproducibility

• Research or operational impact

Papers should position their contributions accurately within the relevant international literature. Authors are encouraged to cite ICIOT and other conferences or journals when genuinely relevant. Citation of any particular venue is not required.

Research Track and Application and Industry Track manuscripts are limited to 15 pages in the Springer LNCS format. Short Paper Track manuscripts are limited to 8 pages. Authors may purchase up to two additional pages, subject to the applicable publication fee. Special Paper Track submissions should follow the limits specified in the corresponding call.

Authors must use the official Springer LNCS templates:

• Microsoft Word template

• LaTeX template

Electronic submission in PDF or Word format is required. Manuscripts that do not follow the required format or exceed the permitted page limit may be returned without review.

A Research Track submission that primarily presents a deployed application or operational solution may be recommended for consideration by the Application and Industry Track.

At least one author of each accepted paper must register for ICIOT 2026 and present the paper at the conference.

Accepted and presented ICIOT 2026 papers will be published in the conference proceedings, which are scheduled to appear in Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.

Springer makes LNCS proceedings available to major abstracting and indexing services. Final inclusion of a volume or individual paper is determined by the policies and selection criteria of each indexing service.

Under the current SCF publication arrangement, the ICIOT 2026 proceedings are expected to become freely accessible through SpringerLink four years after publication.

Extended versions of selected papers may be invited to relevant partner journals. Journal submissions must include substantial extensions and will undergo the journal’s independent editorial and peer-review process.

ICIOT 2026 will recognize outstanding contributions through:

• Best Paper Award

• Best Student Paper Award

For the Best Student Paper Award, the first author must be a full-time student.

ICIOT was established in 2016 as the International Conference on Internet of Things Services to advance research and application innovation involving connected things and IoT-enabled services.

Its scope has since developed from device connectivity and data collection to interoperable platforms, cyber-physical systems, digital twins, intelligent environments, and coordinated IoT ecosystems.

Recent ICIOT conferences were held in Seattle in 2018, San Diego in 2019, virtually in 2020 and 2021, Hawaii in 2022, Shenzhen in 2023, Bangkok in 2024, and Hong Kong in 2025.

ICIOT 2026 continues this development by examining how Agentic AI can connect digital intelligence with sensing, devices, and physical-world action.

ICIOT is a member of the Smart Computing Frontier, a federation of ten co-located international conferences.

Within SCF, ICIOT focuses on connected devices, sensing, actuation, communication, IoT platforms, system integration, security, and physical-world applications.

Its scope is complementary to the other SCF conferences:

• ICWS focuses on Web interfaces, APIs, protocols, and Web-based services.

• SCC focuses on service engineering, lifecycle management, and value creation.

• CLOUD focuses on cloud infrastructure, platforms, and resource management.

• BigData focuses on large-scale data systems and analytics.

• AIMS focuses on AI models, multimodal intelligence, and AI-enabled services.

• EDGE focuses on computing and resource management near devices and users.

• ICCC focuses on cognitive computing.

• ICBC focuses on blockchain technologies and trusted ecosystems.

• METAVERSE focuses on immersive and persistent digital environments.

This structure enables cross-conference collaboration while preserving ICIOT’s distinctive identity as the conference connecting digital intelligence with networked physical things.