ICBO 2026: The first ICBO under the Bilevel Optimization Society

From August 2–5, 2026, the bilevel optimization community gathered in Pittsburgh for ICBO 2026, the first International Conference on Bilevel Optimization held under the umbrella of the Bilevel Optimization Society (BOS).

Jointly hosted by the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, ICBO 2026 brought together approximately 100 researchers from 40 institutions across 14 countries, including nearly 50 PhD students. The conference was co-chaired by Bo Zeng (University of Pittsburgh) and Ramteen Sioshansi (Carnegie Mellon University), with Martin Schmidt serving as Chair of the Program Committee.

The four-day program reflected the diversity and growing scope of the bilevel optimization community. It featured around 80 presentations organized across 24 parallel sessions, together with three plenary talks and a full-day summer school.

The summer school, hosted at Carnegie Mellon University, featured lectures by Zhaosong Lu and Oleg Prokopyev. The main scientific program, held at the University of Pittsburgh, included plenary talks by Leonardo Lozano, Amy Greenwald, and Shoham Sabach.

Research presented throughout the conference covered a broad spectrum of bilevel optimization, from continuous and mixed-integer models to optimization under uncertainty, interdiction, energy systems, inverse optimization, and equilibrium problems. Several sessions also explored the increasingly important connections between bilevel optimization, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data-driven decision-making.

Beyond the scientific program, ICBO 2026 provided an opportunity to strengthen existing collaborations and create new connections across the international community. The particularly strong participation of PhD students and early-career researchers was an encouraging sign for the future of the field.

As conference co-chair Bo Zeng reflected:

“As a co-chair, I believe ICBO 2026, the first ICBO held under the Bilevel Optimization Society (BOS), was a great success and an important milestone for our BO community. The breadth and quality of the research, strong international participation, and enthusiastic involvement of nearly 50 PhD students reflected both the vitality and the promising future of BO.

Most importantly, I would like to say that BOS provides a strong institutional home for this and future ICBO meetings while preserving the open and collaborative spirit that defines this community.”

For BOS, ICBO 2026 represents an important milestone. One of the central goals behind the creation of the Society was to provide a lasting home for the bilevel optimization community and its activities. The first ICBO organized under BOS demonstrated the breadth of this community, bringing together researchers working on different methodological traditions and application areas while maintaining the collaborative spirit that has characterized ICBO meetings.

We sincerely thank Bo Zeng, Ramteen Sioshansi, Martin Schmidt, the organizing and program committees, the local teams at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, the speakers, session chairs, sponsors, and all participants who contributed to making ICBO 2026 possible.

Most importantly, thank you to everyone who joined us in Pittsburgh and helped make the first ICBO under BOS a memorable one.

We look forward to the next ICBO!