Iberian Strings 2026 conference brings the string theory research community together in Santiago

The city of Santiago de Compostela hosted, between Wednesday January 21 and this Friday January 23, the Iberian Strings 2026 conference, the main annual meeting of the research community in Spain and Portugal working in the field of string theory. The local organization was carried out by the IGFAE.

This international conference, held at the Hospedería de San Martiño Pinario, has reached its 18th edition this year, bringing together experts from the Iberian Peninsula, as well as from other countries (the United States, Greece, Israel, Japan, or the United Kingdom, among others) to discuss the latest advances in issues such as supergravity, strings, branes, gauge theories, and related topics in the field of fundamental physics.

The program included plenary lectures (with six invited speakers of notable international prestige), contributed sessions, and a poster session.

The local organizing committee was composed of the IGFAE researchers Riccardo Borsato, Jose Edelstein, Felipe Agurto Sepúlveda, Miguel García Fernández, Tim Meier, Marcelo Oyarzo, and Kostas Rigatos.

About IGFAE

The Galician Institute of High Energy Physics (IGFAE) is a research center created in 1999 by the University of Santiago de Compostela and the Xunta de Galicia. It was established with the aim of coordinating and promoting scientific and technical research in the fields of High Energy Physics, Particle and Nuclear Physics, and related areas such as Astrophysics, Medical Physics, or Instrumentation. It hosts around 140 people who participate in experimental facilities such as CERN, the Pierre Auger Observatory, LIGO, or GSI/FAIR, among others.

The center has been accredited on two occasions (2017 and 2023) as a María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence by the State Research Agency of the Government of Spain. It is also part of the CIGUS network of the Xunta de Galicia, which certifies the quality and impact of its research. It is co-financed by the European Union through the Galicia ERDF Programme 2021–2027.