Symposium On Usable Privacy and Security

WORKSHOPS AND BEYOND

The 2026 Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS) will bring together an interdisciplinary group of researchers and practitioners in human-computer interaction, security, and privacy. The program will feature:

• technical papers, including replication papers and systematization of knowledge papers,
• a poster session,
• lightning talks, and
• workshops and tutorials.

This year SOUPS will be held at Leibniz University Hannover in Germany,
in collaboration with CISPA.

Call for Workshops, Tutorials, and Beyond

All dates are at 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth) time.

Timeline for proposing workshops, tutorials, and more:

Suggested workshop papers timeline:

Workshops will be held Sunday afternoon and Monday morning, August 23rd and 24th, 2026

Workshops and Beyond Co-Chairs

Smirity Kaushik, The George Washington University

Nathan Malkin, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Overview

The Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS) features a day of pre-symposium events, such as workshops, tutorials, hackathons, and beyond to support exploration and networking related to topics of interest to the usable privacy and security community. We invite you to submit a proposal to organize a full- or half-day event on Sunday afternoon, August 23, 2026 and/or Monday morning August 24th as part of SOUPS 2026. (Full-day workshops will be split over two days: Sunday afternoon and Monday morning.)

Pre-symposium events enable attendees with shared interests to meet in the context of a focused and interactive discussion. We are looking for proposals for any types of events beyond the main track:

• Workshops: Workshops are an opportunity to move a topic forward and build community. SOUPS workshops might address basic research, applied research, practice, education, methodologies, competitions, or emerging topics in usable privacy and/or usable security. Some workshops involve calls for position papers, while others involve creative activities and more informal guided discussions around a common topic of interest. Successful workshops at SOUPS 2025 included: 2nd Gender, Online Safety, and Sexuality Workshop (GOSS 2025), Workshop on Developing Research Transparency Guidelines in Human-Centered Privacy and Security, Workshop on Societal and User-Centered Privacy in AI (SUPA 2025), and 4th Annual Workshop on Privacy Threat Modeling.
• Hackathons/Design-a-thons: Hackathons and design-a-thons present an opportunity to bring together hackers, designers, policymakers, researchers, and coders to push boundaries in usable security and privacy. A hackathon should focus on a particular set of topics and include an explanation of how the tools, solutions, and problems developed through the event will help the research community or society at large and continue moving forward after the event. We had a successful design-a-thon in 2024 called Designing Effective and Accessible Approaches for Digital Product Cybersecurity Education and Awareness and one in 2018 called Designing Privacy and Security Tools for Children and Teenagers. Similar events at CHI have included a Hacking Women's Health and Critical Making Hackathon: Situated Hacking, Surveillance and Big Data.
• Tutorials: A SOUPS tutorial is an in-depth learning experience on one or more state-of-the-art topics in usable privacy and security presented by researchers or practitioners within the field. A tutorial should focus on its topic in detail and include references to the "must-read" papers or materials within its domain. Tutorials in which participants actively engage in exercises or hands-on work are particularly welcome. Successful tutorials at previous SOUPS include: Contextual Integrity, Introduction to Password Cracking and Research on Passwords, Hacking Public Policy, and Working with Computer Forensics Data.
• Exhibitions, Interactivity, and Beyond: Do you have a great idea for a SOUPS event that doesn't fit any of the categories above? We are interested in novel and "out of the box" event proposals and encourage workshop and event proposals that do not fit other SOUPS programs. ACM CHI has several event types besides the main paper tracks that could serve as inspiration for out of the box SOUPS events. We look forward to your proposal.

Your workshop, tutorial, hackathon or otherwise should be respectful. A variety of guidance exists on this topic.

Submission Instructions

An example proposal can be found here. Proposals should be submitted as a PDF to the chairs at soups26workshops@googlegroups.com.

Please consolidate all the following components in one PDF file:

• Title of Event
• List of Organizers (including affiliations and contact information)
• Event Type (workshop, tutorial, hackathon/design-a-thon, or exhibitions, interactivity, and beyond)
• Event Length (half day, full day, or full day but could work as half day)
• Description (maximum of 500 words): Describe the event's goal, scope, format (i.e., will you solicit submissions via a CFP or will attendees be engaged in other ways), and structure; for established workshops: please provide links to previous events.
• Abstract (200 words): Abstract promoting the event to be posted on the SOUPS website
• Preliminary list of PC members: A list of PC members the organizers plan to recruit (if needed)
• Draft CFP: Upload a draft of your call for papers, if applicable.
• Sample agenda: How do you plan to structure the event? Include planned sessions, etc.
• Logistics requirements and considerations: Describe your plan and requirements for running the in-person event, e.g., list any space, audio/video or any other requirements for your event.
• Contingency online strategy (Optional): Due to space constraints, there may be some strong submissions that we cannot include in the in-person events. If this occurs, we may offer some organizers the opportunity to run a virtual workshop. In this case, the workshop would be linked from the SOUPS website, but would need to be run online. If you would like your submission considered for this option (though we will prioritize holding events in-person), please describe your plan for adapting your in-person event to an online format, e.g., selected platforms, synchronous and asynchronous components, and how you will deal with time zone issues. Organizers will be responsible for managing their own technology in support of a hybrid or online event. Please also indicate when you would plan to hold your event. Online events can be conducted within a week before or after SOUPS. We strongly discourage running a virtual event during the in-person events to ensure maximum participation.

Upon Acceptance of Your Event

Please note the following milestones which must be met for all SOUPS workshops, tutorials, and events:

• Acceptance notification. Organizers will be notified of acceptance or rejection by Monday, April 6, 2026.
• Final event description deadline. Organizers will have until Thursday, April 16, 2026, to submit their final workshop/tutorial/event descriptions to be posted on the SOUPS website. Workshop organizers will submit their Call for Papers/Participation on the same date. Organizers are encouraged to create a website for their accepted event and include the URL address in their Call for Participation/description for the SOUPS website. If you would like a HotCRP instance set up for your workshop, please email us at soups26workshops@googlegroups.com, and we will get that set up.
• Solicit Contributions and Potential Participants: While some organizers may choose alternate formats, for events accepting paper submissions, workshop papers are typically 2-4 pages long. Workshop paper submissions (if applicable) should be due no later than Thursday, May 28, 2026.
• Workshop paper acceptance notification. Final acceptances for workshop papers must be completed by Thursday, June 11, 2026. This will give participants enough time for early registration to the symposium.
• Events Website: Accepted papers will not be posted on the USENIX website to avoid confusion with archival papers and encourage more informal or experimental workshops and beyond formats. Event organizers are required to create an event website to which the SOUPS website will link. Event organizers will need to include a program for their workshop with paper titles and authors listed.
• Publicize Your event: Organizers of accepted workshops and beyond events must set up and maintain their own website in which they provide further and updated information about their workshop. The Workshops and Beyond page will be linked to from the official SOUPS webpage. In order to have a successful and well-attended workshop, we recommend that you post your call for participation early and widely (e.g., publicize on social media and relevant mailing lists). Workshop organizers may also reach out to the SOUPS chairs at soups26chairs@googlegroups.com for publicity support.

Contact

For questions or to discuss the suitability of a workshop or tutorial idea, please contact the Workshops and Beyond co-chairs at soups26workshops@googlegroups.com