The Second WACE WebAssembly, Cloud and Edge: Shaping the Future of Computing (WACE) Workshop
14–18 December 2026 | Tarragona, Spain | Co-located with ACM Middleware 2026
The Bytecode Alliance, in partnership with Ghent University – imec and the ELASTIC project, is pleased to organise the second WebAssembly, Cloud and Edge: Shaping the Future of Computing (WACE) Workshop, co-located with the ACM Middleware Conference 2026, taking place from 14 to 18 December 2026 in Tarragona, Spain.
The workshop will bring together researchers, industry experts and members of the wider WebAssembly ecosystem to discuss emerging approaches to lightweight, secure and cross-platform software execution across cloud, edge and IoT environments.
The organisers invite submissions of original research papers and welcome presenters and participants interested in contributing to discussions around the future of distributed and heterogeneous computing.
Addressing Challenges Across the Cloud–Edge Continuum
Lightweight and cross-platform software distribution, sandboxing and orchestration are becoming increasingly important for modern cloud-native and edge systems.
The cloud–edge continuum introduces additional requirements, including strong isolation guarantees between tenants, seamless migration across different CPU architectures and very short cold-start times. At the same time, increasingly complex software supply chains and a growing threat landscape create a need for high-performance software sandboxing across a broad range of use cases.
These environments can range from cloud infrastructure and edge nodes to in-application plugin systems, microcontrollers and devices running Real-Time Operating Systems.
Emerging technologies such as WebAssembly and MicroVMs offer promising approaches to addressing these challenges by enabling lightweight execution, stronger isolation and greater portability across heterogeneous platforms.
These themes are particularly relevant to ELASTIC’s work on distributed computing across heterogeneous edge–cloud environments, where efficient workload execution, portability, orchestration and security are key research areas.
Topics of Interest
The WACE workshop invites research addressing challenges related to software distribution, execution and sandboxing across cloud, edge and IoT platforms.
Topics of interest include:
- Containerisation and virtualisation technologies such as WebAssembly and MicroVMs
- Cross-platform application distribution on 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 for microcontrollers and Real-Time Operating Systems
- Software isolation and access control, including in multi-tenant systems
Call for Papers
The organisers invite original research papers that have not previously been published and are not currently under review for publication elsewhere.
Submitted workshop papers should be no longer than 6 pages in the standard ACM format and will undergo a single-blind review process.
At least one author of each accepted workshop paper must hold a full pre-conference registration.
Important Dates
Submission deadline: 17 September 2026
Acceptance notification: 12 October 2026
Camera-ready deadline: 16 October 2026
Submission site:
https://wace2026.hotcrp.com/
For accepted papers, authors should follow the official ACM Middleware 2026 camera-ready instructions:
https://middleware-conf.github.io/2026/camera-ready-instructions/
Best Paper Award
A Best Paper Award certificate will be presented to the author or authors of a paper presented at the workshop.
The winning paper will be selected by the Workshop Chairs based on its scientific significance, originality and outstanding technical quality, also taking into account the evaluations of the members of the Technical Program Committee.
Workshop Format
WACE will be organised as a half-day event combining peer-reviewed scientific contributions with invited talks from industry and ecosystem experts.
The format is designed to encourage interaction between academia and industry and bring together different perspectives on the practical and research challenges surrounding WebAssembly, lightweight virtualisation and distributed computing.
The workshop programme will include:
- Scientific technical sessions featuring peer-reviewed workshop contributions that will be published as part of the conference proceedings
- Invited talks from industry and ecosystem experts, focusing on real-world deployments, architectures and lessons learned
The invited talks will not be included in the conference proceedings.
By combining scientific contributions with practical experience from industry, WACE aims to create an environment for exchanging ideas, discussing open challenges and exploring future directions for WebAssembly and related technologies across the cloud–edge continuum.
Organising Committee
General Chair
Dr. Merlijn Sebrechts – Ghent University, imec
merlijn.sebrechts@ugent.be
Organising Committee
- David Bryant – Bytecode Alliance
- Despina Kopanaki – Technical University of Crete
- Prof. Dr. Sotiris Ioannidis – Technical University of Crete
Technical Program Committee
- Dr. Dhouha Ayed – Thales SIX
- Prof. Mats Brorsson – KTH Royal Institute of Technology / University of Luxembourg
- Dr. George Christou – Technical University of Crete
- Dr. Gregory Chrysos – Technical University of Crete
- Dr. Lachlan J. Gunn – Aalto University
- Prof. Sotiris Ioannidis – Technical University of Crete
- Ing. Michiel Van Kenhove – imec
- Dr. Eva Papadogiannaki – Technical University of Crete
- Dr. José Pedro Pereira dos Santos – Ghent University – imec
- Dr. Merlijn Sebrechts – imec
Join WACE 2026 in Tarragona
Researchers and practitioners working on WebAssembly, WASI, lightweight virtualisation, software isolation, IoT, edge computing and cloud–edge orchestration are invited to submit their work and participate in WACE 2026.
The workshop will provide an opportunity to present new research, exchange experiences with experts from academia and industry, and contribute to discussions around how lightweight and portable computing technologies can support the next generation of distributed systems.
Paper submission deadline: 17 September 2026
Submit your paper:
https://wace2026.hotcrp.com/
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.
