Closing Session

This closing session wraps up ISC 2026 in Hamburg, led by conference chair Rosa M. Badia (Barcelona Supercomputing Center) with incoming chair Rio Yokota (Institute of Science Tokyo). Badia reports a registration record of 4,034 attendees and reviews highlights: the opening keynote on future heterogeneous technologies including quantum and neuromorphic computing, Amanda Randles' keynote on vascular digital twins scaling from a few heartbeats to millions, and Jack Dongarra's closing keynote. She notes the expanded exhibition with strong AI and quantum presence, the new CPU-only Chinese system topping the TOP500 and renewed engagement with China, the Jack Dongarra Award given for work on environmentally sustainable HPC, the Hans Meuer best paper award, and a record number of papers, up 30% year over year and published open access at no charge to authors. New formats included the community stage, a fishbowl discussion, and an active students program with a cluster competition, volunteers, and a next-generation committee. Yokota then presents ISC 2027, returning to Hamburg on June 7-11 under the theme of connecting the far dots, encouraging attendees to reach across scientific domains, generations, and regions. Novelties include workshop proceedings published through a new partnership with Elsevier's Future Generation Computer Systems, with calls opening in autumn, workshop selection by November 2026, and four weeks of worldwide open access. Both chairs urge attendees to complete the conference survey.