Kernel extensions are seeing a renewed interest in the research community with the advent of eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter). eBPF has been gaining popularity in industry for its safety and efficiency in programming end-host network and OS stacks. Several companies have adopted it for use in production-grade applications, including high-performance networking, security monitoring and enforcement, profiling, and CPU scheduling.

Despite the widespread adoption of these kernel extensions, many challenges remain. The static analysis of extensions is growing increasingly complex, yet it continues to suffer from a high rate of false positives, hindering development. Programming hooks and interfaces with the kernel restrict the versatility of extensions. The performance overhead of extensions can also limit high-throughput use cases.

The workshop will bring together a diverse and interdisciplinary audience, including researchers in operating systems, programming languages, computer security, as well as experts in networking, formal specification, and verification. It will be a venue to learn, network, and exchange ideas with others in the community, advancing the state-of-the-art in this exciting and rapidly evolving technology.

We welcome contributions including, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Better approaches to eBPF program safety verification.
• Emerging use cases of kernel extensions in networking, security, CPU scheduling, and smart contracts.
• Techniques to optimize the performance of eBPF programs.
• Security implications of kernel extensions.
• Usage of hardware security or performance features to benefit eBPF.
• Approaches to improving the JIT compilation of eBPF programs.
• Techniques to simplify the development of eBPF programs.
• Case studies and real-world deployments of eBPF.

We are looking for two-types of submissions:

• Research papers of up to 6 pages. Submissions must be original, unpublished work, that have not been concurrently submitted to other venues. Workshop papers will be published in the ACM Digital Library and are thus considered published work. Note that ACM has made a transition towards open access publications. Papers with a corresponding author from an ACM Open member institution will not be subject to Article Processing Charges.
• Poster abstracts of up to 2 pages, submitted in the same format as the workshop papers. We are particularly interested in early-stage findings, position papers, and works that are still in progress. This segment is designed for authors to showcase their preliminary or emerging ideas in a concise, impactful manner, and get early-stage feedback at the workshop. As such, accepted posters will be presented during the dedicated poster session of the SOSP conference. The poster boards are 70"x46", so anything that fits in that space will work. 48"x36" (or 36"x48") is recommended, but participants are welcome to use whatever dimensions they like, so long as it fits on the poster board.

Both types of submissions can use as many additional pages as necessary for citations, and should be written using the SOSP 2026 formatting rules. All submissions are double-blind. The program committee will review papers to determine their relevance to the workshop, their quality, and the likelihood that they will elicit discussion among the attendees. At least one author from each accepted submission must attend the workshop to present and discuss their work.

Please submit your papers via ebpf26.hotcrp.com.