Second WACE Workshop – WebAssembly, Cloud and Edge: Shaping the Future of Computing

 

The ELASTIC project, together with the Bytecode Alliance and Ghent University – imec, is supporting the organisation of the second WebAssembly, Cloud and Edge: Shaping the Future of Computing (WACE) Workshop, which will be co-located with ACM Middleware 2026 in Tarragona, Spain, from 14 to 18 December 2026.

The workshop will bring together researchers, industry experts and members of the WebAssembly ecosystem to explore how emerging lightweight computing technologies can address some of the key challenges of modern cloud, edge and IoT systems.

A Call for Papers is now open, with submissions invited until 17 September 2026.

Exploring the Future of WebAssembly, Cloud and Edge Computing

As computing increasingly spans cloud infrastructure, edge nodes and resource-constrained IoT devices, applications must operate efficiently across highly heterogeneous environments.

This creates new challenges for software distribution, portability, isolation and orchestration. Applications may need to move across different CPU architectures, operate securely in multi-tenant environments and provide very fast start-up times, while increasingly complex software supply chains introduce additional security requirements.

Technologies such as WebAssembly (Wasm) and MicroVMs are emerging as promising approaches to these challenges, offering new possibilities for lightweight execution, software sandboxing and cross-platform deployment.

The WACE workshop provides a dedicated forum for discussing these developments and for connecting research advances with real-world experience from industry and the wider WebAssembly ecosystem.

Connecting with ELASTIC Research

The themes addressed by WACE are closely connected to the research carried out within ELASTIC, where partners are working on technologies for efficient, secure and flexible workload execution across heterogeneous computing environments.

WebAssembly and related technologies are particularly relevant in the context of the edge–cloud continuum, where workloads may need to operate across different infrastructure layers while maintaining portability, isolation and efficient resource utilisation.

By contributing to WACE 2026, ELASTIC is helping strengthen the exchange between research, industry and open technology communities around the future of distributed computing.

Call for Research Contributions

WACE 2026 invites original research addressing software distribution, execution and sandboxing across cloud, edge and IoT platforms.

Topics include:

  • Containerisation and virtualisation technologies, including WebAssembly and MicroVMs
  • Cross-platform application distribution across architectures such as RISC-V and ARM
  • Hardware abstraction and access layers such as the WebAssembly System Interface (WASI)
  • Workload orchestration and resource management across the Edge–Cloud Continuum
  • Application composability and universal plugin systems, including solutions for microcontrollers and Real-Time Operating Systems
  • Software isolation and access control, including in multi-tenant environments

Submitted papers should present original research that has not previously been published and is not currently under review elsewhere.

Workshop papers should be no longer than 6 pages in the standard ACM format and will undergo a single-blind review process.

Important Dates

Submission deadline: 17 September 2026
Acceptance notification: 12 October 2026
Camera-ready deadline: 16 October 2026

Paper submission:
https://wace2026.hotcrp.com/

Bringing Academia and Industry Together

WACE 2026 will take place as a half-day workshop, combining peer-reviewed scientific contributions with invited talks from industry and ecosystem experts.

Scientific sessions will present accepted research papers, which will be published as part of the conference proceedings. Invited speakers will complement these contributions with perspectives on real-world deployments, system architectures and lessons learned from practice.

This combination is intended to encourage direct exchange between academia and industry and create space for discussing both current technical challenges and future research directions.

A Best Paper Award will also recognise an outstanding contribution presented at the workshop, based on scientific significance, originality and technical quality.

Join WACE 2026

Researchers and practitioners working on WebAssembly, WASI, cloud and edge computing, lightweight virtualisation, software isolation, IoT and distributed systems are invited to contribute to the workshop and join the discussion in Tarragona.

With WebAssembly continuing to expand beyond its original browser environment, WACE 2026 offers an opportunity to explore how lightweight and portable computing technologies can contribute to the next generation of cloud–edge systems.

Submission deadline: 17 September 2026

Submit your paper:
https://wace2026.hotcrp.com/

For more information about the workshop, visit:
https://bytecodealliance.org/wace2026

For full workshop details, including the programme format, topics of interest, organising committee and submission information, visit the WACE 2026 event page on the ELASTIC website.

Funding Acknowledgement

The ELASTIC project has received funding from the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU) under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 101139067.