Termination Competition 2026 - Revision history

Ffrohn at 08:39, 23 February 2026

2026-02-23T08:39:34Z

Ffrohn: /* Dates */

2026-02-18T10:15:10Z

Dates

Ffrohn: /* Changes with respect to 2025 */

2026-02-18T10:09:43Z

Changes with respect to 2025

Ffrohn: /* Competition Procedure */

2026-02-18T10:08:49Z

Competition Procedure

Ffrohn: /* Changes with respect to 2025 */

2026-02-11T15:42:19Z

Changes with respect to 2025

Ffrohn at 08:40, 11 February 2026

2026-02-11T08:40:22Z

Ffrohn: Created page with "The Termination and Complexity Competition (TermComp) 2026 will be affiliated with [https://termination-portal.org/wiki/21st_International_Workshop_on_Termination WST 2026], w..."

2026-02-11T08:22:19Z

Created page with "The Termination and Complexity Competition (TermComp) 2026 will be affiliated with [https://termination-portal.org/wiki/21st_International_Workshop_on_Termination WST 2026], w..."

New page

The Termination and Complexity Competition (TermComp) 2026 will be affiliated with [https://termination-portal.org/wiki/21st_International_Workshop_on_Termination WST 2026], which takes place at [https://www.floc26.org/ FLoC 2026].

The competition will be run on the RWTH Aachen High Performance Computing Cluster.
The first run will be two weeks before WST, followed by a bug/conflict reporting phase.
Bug fixes will be possible until shortly before the final run.
The final run and a presentation of the final results will be live at WST, and presumably also either at IJCAR, or in the context of the FLoC Olympics..



== Dates ==

* Tool and Benchmark Submission: June 26
* First Run: July 9/10
* Final Run: July 24/25
* Presentation of the results at WST: July 25

== Competition Categories ==

The competition contains several categories for termination and complexity from the areas of term rewriting (all categories with HO/FO-TRSs, with- or without strategies) and programming languages (Logic Programming, Haskell, Java, C, integer transition systems, ...)

Proposals for new categories are welcome.

A category is only run at the competition if there are at least 2 participants, at least 40 examples
for this category in the underlying termination problem data base, and clearly defined rules.

== Competition Procedure ==

All participants in the same category will be run on the existing problems of this category.
There might be modifications of the rules suggested by the organizer and decided by the SC.

The wall-clock timeout for each benchmark is determined as follows:
* The minimal timeout is 5 seconds
* The maximal timeout is 300 seconds
* For benchmarks that have not been solved in 2025, the timeout is 300 seconds
* For benchmarks that have been solved in 2025, the timeout is determined by multiplying the runtime of the fastest successful solver by 2, i.e., the runtime is <pre>min(300, max(5, 2 x runtime of last year's fastest solver))</pre>
Further technical information is available [[Termination Competition 2026 technical details|here]].

The tools are expected to give an answer (YES, NO, MAYBE) in the first line on stdout, followed by a proof in ASCII, HTML, or CPF format. Exceptions to these rules are the [http://www.termination-portal.org/wiki/Termination_Competition_Certified_Categories_Competition certified] (see also the [http://cl-informatik.uibk.ac.at/software/cpf/ CPF-website]) and [http://cl-informatik.uibk.ac.at/users/georg/cbr/competition/ complexity] categories. See all existing [http://www.termination-portal.org/wiki/Category:Categories categories] for more details.

For those categories devoted to prove only termination or non-termination, the score of a tool is the number of non-contradictory answers minus the given penalization (if any).

A proof or answer that is known to be wrong will be penalized by -10 points, if it remains after the bugfix deadline.
The SC will decide what should be penalized, depending on the discussion among the participants.

== Steering Committee ==

* Florian Frohn (Chair and Organizer), RWTH Aachen
* Jürgen Giesl, RWTH Aachen
* Georg Moser, University of Innsbruck
* Étienne Payet, Université de La Réunion
* Akihisa Yamada, AIST Tokyo Waterfront
* Dieter Hofbauer, ASW Saarland

== Registration ==

To submit a tool, please follow the instruction at [https://github.com/TermCOMP/registration this repository].
Every participant must submit at least five new '''secret''' benchmarks via email to florian.frohn@cs.rwth-aachen.de (unless the size of the benchmarks exceeds 5MB -- in that case, please get in touch to figure out another way).
Please also include a README with a (short) description of the origin of the benchmarks.
After the competition, these benchmarks will become part of TPDB.

To submit a benchmark, please follow the instruction at the [https://github.com/TermCOMP/TPDB-ARI TPDB ARI repository]

We recommend to register early, and update information as needed.

It is highly recommended that participants also subscribe to the [https://lists.rwth-aachen.de/postorius/lists/termtools.lists.rwth-aachen.de/ termtools] mailing list, because that is where announcements will be made, and where discussion takes place.

== Technical Details ==

Competition data will be presented via [https://github.com/TermCOMP/starexec-master starexec-master]
(a successor of [https://github.com/stefanvonderkrone/star-exec-presenter star-exec-presenter] developed at HTWK Leipzig).



== Contact ==

Any questions or suggestions regarding the termination competition should go to, and discussed at termtools<at>lists.rwth-aachen.de

To contact the steering committee, send an email to terminationcompetitionsc<at>lists.rwth-aachen.de.

== Changes with respect to 2025 ==

These lists reflect the discussion in the community, and in the steering committee. Items are preliminary, and not officially binding.
Please do not edit this list (unless you're in the SC). Instead, send proposals to termtools or terminationcompetitionsc mailing list,
or create a new wiki page and put a link here.

Proposed changes:

* In addition to the usual tracks, we will try to organize a '''knockout tournament'''.

Adopted changes:

* We will only run categories with clearly defined rules.
* Every participant has to submit at least five new '''secret''' benchmarks
* Instead of using a fixed timeout as in previous years, the timeout will be determined as described above
* Demo categories will only be run on request, and this request has to be justified somehow (e.g., by a paper, significant tool improvements, ...). The final decision is up to the SC.
* Submissions to TPDB must have a README with a (short) description of the origin of the benchmarks.

@@ Line 2: / Line 2: @@
 The competition will be run on the RWTH Aachen High Performance Computing Cluster.
-The first run will be two weeks before WST, followed by a bug/conflict reporting phase.
+Test runs will take place right after the submission deadline, followed by a bug/conflict reporting phase.
-Bug fixes will be possible until shortly before the final run.
+Bug fixes will be possible until shortly before the full run.
-The final run and a presentation of the final results will be live at WST, and presumably also at IJCAR.
+A live run on a subset of the benchmark collection, and a presentation of the final results will take place at WST.

@@ Line 15: / Line 15: @@
 * Tool and Benchmark Submission: June 26
-* First Run: July 9/10
+* Full Run: July 13-17
-* Final Run: July 24/25
+* Live Run: July 24/25
 * Presentation of the results at WST: July 25

@@ Line 93: / Line 93: @@
 * In addition to the usual tracks, we will try to organize a '''knockout tournament'''.
 Adopted changes:
@@ Line 101: / Line 100: @@
 * Demo categories will only be run on request, and this request has to be justified somehow (e.g., by a paper, significant tool improvements, ...). The final decision is up to the SC.
 * Submissions to TPDB must have a README with a (short) description of the origin of the benchmarks.

@@ Line 33: / Line 33: @@
 There might be modifications of the rules suggested by the organizer and decided by the SC.
-The wall-clock timeout for each benchmark is determined as follows:
+There will be a full run on the entire benchmark collection '''before''' WST, and a live run on a subset of the benchmark collection at WST.
-* The minimal timeout is 5 seconds
+The timeout for the full run will be 300 seconds.
-* The maximal timeout is 300 seconds
+The timeout for the live run will be significantly smaller (presumably 30 seconds).
-* For benchmarks that have not been solved in 2025, the timeout is 300 seconds
+The results of the full run will be announced at WST.
-* For benchmarks that have been solved in 2025, the timeout is determined by multiplying the runtime of the fastest successful solver by 2, i.e., the runtime is <pre>min(300, max(5, 2 x runtime of last year's fastest solver))</pre>
 Further technical information is available [[Termination Competition 2026 technical details|here]].