The 2026 Prolog Improvement Propoals (PIPs) Workshop

The 2026 “Prolog Improvement Proposals (PIPs) Workshop”, will take place at ICLP 2026, as part of the Federated Logic Conference (FLoC) 2026, in Lisbon, Portugal, on July 19, 2026.

What is a PIP

A PIP is a document describing the design and implementation of one Prolog language feature. Examples of PIPs that are recently completed or under development are the JANUS Python interface, static and dynamic dictionaries, JSON interface, modes, write term options, float enhancements, binary prefix operators, CSV interface, etc.

PIPs inform the Prolog user and developer community about existing approaches and provide implementers a reference for potential language standardization. It is acceptable to have PIPs describe alternative approaches to any given language feature, although it is hoped that PIPs will promote informal consensus over time. To this end, to be accepted, PIPs must be supported by at least two Prolog systems. This descriptive approach to standardization complements the existing prescriptive ISO framework and can serve as input to ISO deliberations. More information about the PIP framework and some initial PIPs is available here.

The workshop

This workshop will offer Prolog users and implementers a chance to discuss improvements to the Prolog language and the process of PIP creation. The workshop will begin with a review of the PIP process and of recently developed PIPs followed by . Next, there presentations from users and implementers of Prolog of short descriptions of features of systems that they believe would benefit other systems and that could evolve into a PIP. The idea is also to foster wide participation in the Prolog Improvements Forum activities so that new PIPs will be proposed, developed, reviewed, and adopted by the Prolog community at large.

In order to include as many implementers and interested users as possible we plan to conduct this as a hybrid workshop.

How to participate

We welcome:

  • Short presentations of proposed PIP topics or features.
  • Short presentations on your system’s implementation of some Prolog feature that may be the foundation for a PIP.
  • And you can of course just attend the workshop, share ideas, and provide feedback.

To propose a short presentation (around 10min), please submit a presentation title and abstract of 1-2 paragraphs. Presentations at the workshop should be 1-2 slides long.

Deadlines:

  • Submission of presentation abstracts: June 5, 2026
  • Notification of presentation acceptance: June 19, 2026

Submissions:

Please submit all materials through EasyChair.

The PIP25 Organizing Committee:

  • Carl Andersen, RTX BBN Technologies
  • Manuel Hermenegildo, U. Politécnica de Madrid and IMDEA Software Institute
  • José F. Morales, U. Politécnica de Madrid and IMDEA Software Institute
  • Joachim Schimpf, Coninfer Ltd, UK
  • Theresa Swift, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab
  • David Warren, Stony Brook University
  • Jan Wielemaker, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

The Prolog Improvements Forum is a part of the "All Things Prolog" online Prolog community, an initiative of the Association for Logic Programming stemming from the Year of Prolog activities.