PLDI 2026
Basics
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Dates | – |
| Venue | Limelight Boulder, Boulder, Colorado |
| Host | ACM SIGPLAN |
| URL | pldi26.sigplan.org |
| Streams | PLDI 2026 Live Streams (ACM SIGPLAN) |
| Format | Multi-track with co-located events, workshops, tutorials |
| Framing | PL research, compilers, verification; PAgE workshop on agentic engineering |
Co-located conferences
- ISMM 2026 – International Symposium on Memory Management
- LCTES 2026 – Languages, Compilers, and Tools for Embedded Systems
Workshops
| Workshop | Full name | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| ARRAY 2026 | Array-oriented Programming | |
| CP 2026 | Choreographic Programming | Kuper keynote; correct-by-construction distributed |
| EGRAPHS | Equality Graphs | E-graph rewriting, optimization |
| PAgE 2026 | Principles of Agentic Engineering | Formal foundations for agent safety/reliability |
| PLMW | PL Mentoring Workshop | |
| PROPL | Programming for the Planet | |
| SOAP 2026 | State of the Art in Program Analysis | |
| -- | Tom Ball at Sixty | Celebration session |
Tutorials
- Writing Performance-Portable Kernels Simplified with Helion
- A guided tour through Oxidized OCaml
- Implementing an Integrated Development Environment
- Mechanized Specifications for Real-World Programming Languages
- ACT: End-to-End Compiler Infrastructure for Emerging AI Accelerators
- Deep dive into the AWS Nitro Isolation Engine
PAgE 2026: Principles of Agentic Engineering
Full page: program, accepted papers, recording
The workshop most directly connected to current research. 10 accepted papers, 2 keynotes, chaired by Shraddha Barke. Mon 15 Jun, Meadows B. Recording.
Research papers
Wed 17 Jun research papers relevant to our threads (type systems, contracts/
verification, distributed/choreographies, abstract interpretation + LLMs,
dependent types) — with DOIs/preprints in research-papers/references.bib and the
speaker cross-links (Singh→PAgE, Sorensen/Martínez→PAgE kernels, Das→CP,
Pierce/Jhala/Rompf→four-ways).
Why
PLDI sits at the intersection of formal methods and practical compiler engineering. Three reasons this year matters:
- PAgE workshop. First SIGPLAN-affiliated venue explicitly framed as "agentic engineering." The formal-methods community claiming this term has downstream consequences for how agent governance gets specified. The elenctic-spec framing and Seven Concerns layering should be testable against whatever vocabulary PAgE settles on.
- Nitro Isolation Engine tutorial. AWS Nitro is the production hypervisor-isolation analog to Antithesis. The tutorial is a data point on how far hardware-backed isolation has moved since BugBash.
- Egraphs workshop. E-graph rewriting is the optimization substrate beneath equality saturation. Relevant to any spec-refinement system that needs to normalize equivalent representations – the same problem elenctic-spec faces at the methodology layer.
Refutation
The PAgE framing for this event is wrong if:
- The workshop is dominated by LLM-agent benchmarking rather than formal foundations (safety/reliability becomes eval leaderboards).
- The "agentic engineering" vocabulary diverges completely from the Seven Concerns framing, with no productive mapping between them.
- The Nitro tutorial is marketing rather than technical substrate.
In those cases PLDI reduces to a compiler conference with an adjacent agent workshop that didn't converge on useful primitives.
Concern mapping
| Event/Talk | Concern | Claim under test |
|---|---|---|
| PAgE workshop (overall) | L3, L7 | PL community can formalize agent governance primitives |
| Grossman/Song/Zorn committee | L3 | Formal methods vocabulary for agents will be PL-native |
| Nitro Isolation Engine | L1, L5 | Hardware isolation composes with agent sandboxing |
| Egraphs workshop | L2, L3 | Equality saturation applies to spec normalization |
| Mechanized Specifications | L3 | Mechanized specs are the reader-as-spec-emitter generalized |
| Oxidized OCaml tutorial | L1, L2 | Rust ownership model transfers to ML family |
Related
- BugBash 2026 – Antithesis, DST, software correctness; the testing-side complement to PAgE's formal-methods framing
- ELS 2026 – European Lisp Symposium; MOP and reader-as-protocol are the Lisp-side complement
- TLA+ System Design – formal specification practice, directly relevant to PAgE submissions
- Agentic Systems 2026 – Seven Concerns framework that PAgE vocabulary should map to
- Elenctic Vibe Code Review – the review discipline PAgE might formalize
- Lean4 on FreeBSD – theorem proving toolchain, mechanized specification substrate
- Agent Isolation with FreeBSD Jails – local isolation counterpart to Nitro tutorial