The Foundations of Agentic Systems Theory (FAST) workshop will take place on December 12, 2026 in Paris, held at NeurIPS 2026. FAST brings together researchers from AI, complex systems, developmental biology, organizational sociology and cognitive science to ask how the behavior of systems of LLM-based agents emerges, and how it can be understood and controlled.
About the workshop
The most interesting and consequential behaviors of complex systems often arise not from the parts in isolation, but from the patterns of interaction between them. Current development of agentic AI has largely focused on building more capable individual agents, which risks underestimating both the capabilities and the risks of agents once they become widespread.
Existing theory from control, game and economic theory, operations research and the social sciences does not map cleanly onto agentic AI: LLM-based agents are neither idealized rational agents nor culturally shaped human agents. FAST provides a venue to investigate which mechanisms of emergent behavior carry over to systems of LLM-based agents, which properties of the underlying agents facilitate or impede them, and how far system-wide outcomes can be controlled or induced. Interdisciplinary participation is strongly encouraged, through both contributions and invited talks.
Topics of interest
Keynote speakers
Program
The workshop opens with brief remarks from the organizers, followed by a mix of keynotes, contributed talks, poster sessions and a panel, with networking breaks throughout to maximize discussion time.
The detailed schedule will be posted on the workshop website once paper decisions have been finalized.
Important dates
Submission information
Submissions are made through OpenReview using the NeurIPS 2026 template, and must be anonymized for double-blind review. Accepted papers are presented as posters or contributed talks. Papers are non-archival, so work under submission elsewhere is welcome.
Registration
Registrations for the NeurIPS Europe event have sold out, and a waitlist is open. Registration is complimentary for financial aid recipients, volunteers, top reviewers, ACs/SACs, and authors of papers at affinity events. A second call for volunteers, open to PhD students and postdocs and including free registration, will open in early October. The venue is the Palais des Congrès de Paris.