Digital Forensics Doctoral Symposium 2026 (DFDS 2026)
Linköping, Sweden
March 24, 2026

We are excited to announce the 2nd Digital Forensics Doctoral Symposium 
(DFDS), organized by DFRWS EU. This symposium provides a unique platform 
for doctoral students to share their (early-stage) research, engage in 
discussions with peers, and build connections within the digital 
forensics' community. The Doctoral Symposium is co-located with DFRWS EU 
2026, taking place March 24-27, 2026.

Topics of Interest:
The Doctoral Symposium is open to fresh insights that challenge the 
current boundaries of digital forensics. The submissions can cover a 
broad range of topics related to digital forensics, including, but not 
limited to:
- Anti-forensics and counter-anti-forensics
- AI-assisted digital forensics
- Case studies and trend reports
- Cloud and virtualized environment forensics
- Covert channels (e.g. TOR, VPN)
- Cryptocurrency investigation
- Development of digital forensic infrastructures
- Digital evidence sharing and exchange
- Digital evidence and the law
- Digital forensic analysis of AI models
- Digital forensic preparedness / readiness
- Digital investigation case management
- Digital forensic tool validation
- Digital forensic triage / survey
- Event reconstruction methods and tools
- Forensics analysis and visualization of Big Data
- Forensic analysis of anonymous networks
- Forensic analysis of databases
- Implanted medical devices
- Incident response on malware and targeted attacks
- Machine learning and data mining for digital evidence extraction/query
- Memory acquisition and analysis
- Methodology for digital forensic processes
- Mobile and embedded device forensics
- Multimedia (image, audio, video) data analysis
- Network and distributed system forensics
- Non-traditional forensic scenarios / contexts
- SCADA / industrial control systems
- Smart power grid forensics
- Steganography and steganalysis
- Smart building forensics
- Vehicle forensics (e.g., drones, cars)
- Visualization methods and tools for forensic analysis

Submission Information:
The Doctoral Symposium invites contributions in the form of Short 
Research Papers typically 6 pages in length, with up to 8 pages 
tolerated in exceptional circumstances (excluding references). They must 
be original contributions, must not be under simultaneous publication 
review elsewhere, the lead author must be a student, and must align with 
the topics of interest of the symposium. Survey/literature review papers 
are not suitable for publication at DFDS.

Papers must be written in English, blinded, and must not exceed 8 
single-spaced, two-column pages. This page limit does NOT include 
references and appendix, although references and appendix should be 
limited to one page to the extent possible (= 9 pages in total). Papers 
must be submitted as PDF files. The preferred reference style is 
Harvard. Please use the ACM LaTeX sigconf proceedings template 
(https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template) for your 
article. Fonts used in the template cannot be substituted; margin 
adjustments are not allowed.

All submissions undergo an initial screening by the TPC Chair(s) 
ensuring relevance to the event and compliance with the submission 
criteria. Once approved, submissions will undergo a "double-blind"
review process, therefore, the version submitted for review must not 
contain the names or affiliations of the authors and should anonymize 
content that readily identifies the authors, such as references to tools 
developed by the authors. When referring to their own previous work, 
authors should use the third person instead of the first person (i.e., 
"Smith and Jones [2] previously determined" instead of "We [2] 
previously determined"). Please note that the Doctoral Symposium 
submissions will undergo a separate review process (and be published in 
a separate proceedings) compared to the full papers of the main DFRWS EU 
conference.

All contributions must be submitted to the Digital Forensics Doctoral 
Symposium track through the EasyChair site at 
https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=dfrwseu2026.

Articles will be published with ACM as DFDS '26: Proceedings of the 
Digital Forensics Doctoral Symposium. Please note that the publication 
is subject to an ACM Open Access Fee. For institutions participating in 
ACM Open the publication is free of charge.

At least one full DFRWS EU registration per paper is required before 
submitting the camera-ready version, i.e., before the camera-ready 
submission deadline. Please note, this DFRWS EU registration is separate 
to any ACM ICPS publishing charge (should it apply). Authors MUST 
present their work in person at the symposium.

For questions related to the doctoral symposium, please send an email 
to: janine.schneider (at) dfrws (dot) org

Deadlines:
October 31, 2025        	Full papers: Submission of Abstract & Title via 
                                EasyChair
November 07, 2025    Full papers: Final submission via EasyChair
December 12, 2025    Acceptance notification

Previous Submissions:
Previous submissions can be found at 
https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/3712716, providing examples 
of the paper format and previously accepted topics.