The ICM Comes to the United States, Philadelphia, July 23–30, 2026
Mathematicians from around the world will gather in Philadelphia from July 23–30, 2026, for the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM). To learn more about the meeting and to register, visit www.icm2026.org.
When the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) comes to the United States this year, it will be an occasion for celebration, reflection and unity. To be held July 23 to 30 in Philadelphia, ICM2026 will provide a showcase for the beauty and depth of mathematics, a forum for considering the role of the field in culture and art, and an opportunity for mathematicians from around the globe to unite around ideals they share.
“A congress like this one, which attracts thousands of people, will show how science, and particularly mathematics, transcends political, cultural and national divides,” said ICM2026 Organizing Committee member Irene Fonseca of Carnegie Mellon University. Mathematics is based on timeless values like the value of rigorous thinking. “These core values and truths don’t change depending on political views or the political environment,” said Fonseca. “Science and mathematics are very resilient.”
Enthusiasm and Dedication
This resilience can be seen in the 13-person ICM2026 Organizing Committee. “We are putting in all the effort we can to make it the best ICM we possibly can, to make it the best experience for the attendees, make it rewarding, make it memorable” said ICM2026 Organizing Committee member Robert L. Bryant of Duke University. “It’s our responsibility to the international community to give it our best effort.”
One of the committee’s concerns has been the possibility that travel restrictions might prevent some mathematicians from getting visas to attend the congress. Although these worries have not disappeared, they have eased. A test case came in summer of 2025, when the Mathematical Congress of the Americas (MCA) was held in Miami. The MCA organizers reported no major obstacles for international participants to attend. Cautiously hopeful, the ICM2026 organizers continue to monitor developments in U.S. travel policies and have pledged to help solve visa problems if they arise.
An encouraging sign is the rate of acceptance of invitations to speak at ICM2026, which has been a bit higher than for previous congresses. “We have had very few declinations, less than a handful,” said Jalal Shatah of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, who chairs the Organizing Committee. Registrations are tracking with expectations from earlier ICMs, as are submissions for short communications and poster sessions. Shatah noted that economic pressures felt around the world might eventually affect the number of participants. Nevertheless, a fairly large gathering is expected.
The support of the Simons Foundation means that ICM2026 has been largely shielded from concerns about eroding funding for science. In addition, the administrative support of the foundation’s staff, particularly Meghan Fazzi, has greatly facilitated the planning.
Still, the Organizing Committee has had a great deal to do, with monthly meetings of the committee itself, meetings with subcommittees focused on specific tasks and ad hoc consultations with colleagues and organizations. Talking to the committee members, one feels it is a labor of love, which Shatah confirmed. “Everyone has been very enthusiastic and dedicated,” he said.
An Exciting Scientific Program
Hiraku Nakajima of the Kavli Institute at the University of Tokyo is the current president of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), which oversees the ICM. Back in 1990, when he was a fresh Ph.D. working in differential geometry, Nakajima attended the 1990 ICM in Kyoto and listened to George Lusztig give a plenary lecture on a new geometric approach to representation theory. In Lusztig’s explanation of the concept of a quiver, Nakajima found what he needed in order to understand a new kind of manifold he had discovered, which came to be called a quiver variety. “That was a turning point in my career,” said Nakajima. More than thirty years later, “I am still working on quiver varieties.”
As IMU president, Nakajima plays a mainly advisory role in the planning for ICM2026. He does however have one extremely important job: He serves as chair of the selection committee for the Fields Medals. Gossip about who might get medals always intensifies in the run-up to the congress. Asked about this, Nakajima is a model of discretion and understatement, saying only, “This is a very interesting topic for chatting among mathematicians.”
Another task for Nakajima, in consultation with the IMU Executive Committee, was to appoint the ICM2026 Program Committee. Chaired by Claire Voisin of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France, the Program Committee crafts the scientific program for the congress, including selecting plenary speakers and appointing panelists to choose invited speakers in the disciplinary sections.
The ICM2026 scientific program shows “we really have made great advances in mathematics” in the time since the previous congress, Nakajima said. “Several conjectures and big problems have been solved recently, and this is very exciting.” A prominent example is the 2024 proof of the geometric Langlands conjecture. “Many people appreciate the Langlands program because it connects many areas in mathematics,” Nakajima commented. Highlighting such connections “is very close to the motivation of the ICM.”
Artificial intelligence (AI) emerges as a theme across the scientific program. While there is no section devoted to this topic, several invited speakers have brought AI tools into their work and are expected to discuss this in their lectures. In addition, the use of AI in mathematics will be the subject of public lectures as well as two afternoons of panel discussions. The latter are being organized by two University of Pennsylvania locals who serve on the ICM2026 Organizing Committee, Jonathan Block and Tony Pantev. “This congress is kind of between worlds,” Pantev remarked. “AI is not properly part of the research community yet, but it’s approaching us, so there is an opportunity to make a connection.”
Nakajima emphasized that the planning of the scientific program for ICM2026 was not confined to a small elite. About 160 mathematicians the world over were formally involved as Program Committee or section panel members, and probably another few hundred contributed through informal consultations. As a result, the scientific program is very much a product of the community. “That’s the reason it’s so prestigious to be chosen as an ICM speaker,” said Nakajima. “It’s recognition by the community.” As superficial numerical criteria like citation indexes continue to replace expert judgments in many areas of research and academia, “it’s very important that we mathematicians evaluate ourselves.”
Ensuring Worldwide Participation
Each ICM draws a substantial proportion of its participants from the host country. Given the tens of thousands of mathematicians in the U.S., plus many mathematically interested people in aligned fields, American attendance at ICM2026 is expected to be substantial. Supporting this attendance is a program of travel grants for U.S. mathematicians, run by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and funded by the National Science Foundation. Representation of mathematicians from Canada and Mexico is also expected to be high.
To ensure that mathematicians from all over the world are represented at the congress, the ICM2026 Organizing Committee created a program of travel grants to support mathematicians from eligible developing countries. With funding from the Simons Foundation and several other organizations, the program was overseen by Organizing Committee member Wilfrid Gangbo of the University of California, Los Angeles.
About 2,000 applications were submitted through the AMS Math Programs system. Eight regional panels appointed by mathematics organizations reviewed the applications. The 683 grantees who were ultimately chosen received notification in March 2025, to ensure plenty of time for visa applications. In some places getting a visa can take more than a year, said Gangbo. “We hope the rejection rate will be low.”
African by birth, Gangbo knows well the conditions faced by mathematicians in developing countries. Without the travel grants, almost no mathematicians from Africa would attend the ICM, he said. “The cost for one person is more than two months’ salary for many mathematics professors in Africa.” Often, such mathematicians earned degrees in the U.S. or Europe but lack opportunities for interactions with international colleagues. Through ICM2026, Gangbo said, “I am hoping they will discover a lot of exciting mathematics.”
Each ICM provides the venue for awarding prestigious prizes sponsored by the International Mathematical Union. The Fields Medal is awarded for outstanding mathematical achievement in existing work and for the promise of future achievement. The medal features a portrait of Archimedes along with the Latin inscription “Transire suum pectus mundoque potiri,”which is commonly interpreted as “to rise above oneself and master the world.”
The Carl Friedrich Gauss Prize is one of the major international honors in mathematics, awarded jointly by the International Mathematical Union and the German Mathematical Society. It recognizes outstanding mathematical research that has had significant applications outside of mathematics. The medal itself is named after Carl Friedrich Gauss, often called the “Prince of Mathematicians,” and the medal design features a portrait of Gauss, honoring his profound influence across mathematics, physics, astronomy, and engineering.
The Abacus Medal recognizes exceptional contributions to the mathematical foundations of information science. The medal design features the “Abacus Bird of the Mathematicians,” a stylized, nearly abstract geometric figure capable of carrying and flying with the beads of an abacus. The reverse side depicts disorder unified by a single line, symbolizing an algorithm that brings structure and coherence.
The Chern Medal is awarded to an individual whose accomplishments warrant the highest level of recognition for outstanding achievements in the field of mathematics. All living, natural persons, regardless of age or vocation, shall be eligible for the Medal. The front of the Medal features a portrait of Shiing-Shen Chern at age 73 in the center. Chern's Chinese signature is to the left of the portrait, while his English signature sits to the right. The reverse side of the Medal displays the generalized Gauss-Bonnet theorem, elegantly and intrinsically proved by Chern in 1944, now frequently termed the Chern-Gauss-Bonnet theorem.
The Leelavati Prize, sponsored by Infosys, is intended to accord high recognition and great appreciation of the International Mathematical Union (on behalf of the international mathematical community) and Infosys of outstanding contributions for increasing public awareness of mathematics as an intellectual discipline and the crucial role it plays in diverse human endeavors. It is named after Lilavati, a famous 12th-century mathematical text written in poetic Sanskrit by Bhāskara II. There is no physical medal for this prize.
Each ICM provides the venue for awarding prestigious prizes sponsored by the International Mathematical Union. The Fields Medal is awarded for outstanding mathematical achievement in existing work and for the promise of future achievement. The medal features a portrait of Archimedes along with the Latin inscription “Transire suum pectus mundoque potiri,”which is commonly interpreted as “to rise above oneself and master the world.”
An Array of Cultural Activities
ICM2026 Organizing Committee member John W. Morgan of Columbia University has attended several congresses in his long career. He sees the ICM as a rare opportunity to get a glimpse of mathematics as a whole. “Maybe you have been looking very hard at the local trees in your neighborhood, but it’s nice to step back and see the beauty of the whole forest,” he said. “It can also be quite helpful when you go back and look at your trees again.”
Morgan’s first ICM was Vancouver in 1974, when he was five years past his Ph.D. “I got to meet all these luminaries and hear the way they thought about mathematics,” Morgan recalled. It was a chance to “[absorb] what world-class mathematics is, how it operates, what it’s like, what’s in the air.” He especially remembered discussing Hodge theory with Pierre Deligne, who four years later would get a Fields Medal at the 1978 congress in Helsinki. Another vivid Vancouver memory for Morgan was a wild party given by French mathematician Adrien Douady, who was beloved for his unconventional joie de vivre.
The Vancouver congress was held at the University of British Columbia, back in the days when it was still possible to hold an ICM on a university campus. Today the size and complexity of the ICM make a university venue impossible. As with the past several congresses, ICM2026 will be held in a dedicated conference site, the Pennsylvania Convention Center, which has plenty of space and good facilities for the myriad congress events. Another important difference between ICMs of recent times and those of decades past can be seen in the role that the congress now plays as a forum for celebrating how mathematics connects to society, culture and the arts. In this spirit, an extensive array of activities is planned for the Philadelphia congress, many of them aimed at the general public.
In the middle weekend of the congress, a team from the National Museum of Mathematics in New York City will stage a public Math Festival in the exhibition hall of the convention center. The ICM2026 Organizing Committee has approved about twenty proposals for math-and-art exhibits, documentary screenings, hands-on activities and the like; some of these will take place only during the Math Festival, while others will be available for the duration of the congress. One example: 3Blue1Brown creator Grant Sanderson will do live online presentations to accompany showings of his acclaimed math videos, which are both rigorous and beautiful. Also on hand will be the Mathemalchemy exhibition, a collaborative art installation that celebrates the creativity and beauty of mathematics.
Fifteen minutes by foot from the convention center is the American Philosophical Society (APS), whose archives include papers of some prominent American mathematicians. Mathematics historian Karen Parshall of the University of Virginia is working with the APS to create an exhibit that will draw on materials from the 18th through 20th centuries to provide glimpses into the history of mathematics in the United States. Because the space that the APS is able to offer is quite limited, the exhibit will also be available in online form.
Among other off-site activities will be a concert and presentation by organist Daniel Forger. Hopes are high that Philadelphia’s renowned Wanamaker organ, which was built in 1904 and is the world’s largest functioning pipe organ, will be available for the concert. Mathematically themed murals will be painted on walls near the convention center, a series of movies featuring mathematics will be screened, and there will be a session on mathematics and sports (including, the organizers hope, a trip to the local stadium for a Philadelphia Phillies game). An event to honor the memory of Emmy Noether will include a trip to her grave at Bryn Mawr College.
Of particular interest to many attendees will be a symposium honoring Jean-Pierre Serre. To celebrate his 100th year, the congress will host several lectures about the profound influence of this legendary mathematician.
Looking Forward to a Great ICM
In July 2026, Philadelphia will be awash in events surrounding the 250th anniversary of the United States. The city has a special significance in the festivities because it was the site of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. With ICM2026 happening in the same month, congress organizers are working on ways to connect the ICM to the anniversary activities.
The timing is fortuitous. At the heart of the founding of the U.S. are ideals including acceptance, tolerance and openness. “We want to make the ICM as welcoming a space as possible, and there is a lot of good will in the American public,” said Bryant. “We are looking forward to a great ICM.”
