Conference Updates

The complete proceedings from our 2026 conference, Nonimaging Optics XXI, are now available online. This peer-reviewed collection includes both papers and presentation recordings from the conference.

You can access the proceedings through our proceedings page, or directly in the SPIE Digital Library through two complementary collections:

1. Main Proceedings Collection - Contains proceedings papers and their corresponding presentation recordings
2. Presentation Recordings Collection - Contains recordings from presentations where no proceedings paper was submitted

You can also explore all previous conference proceedings of this conference series.

Thank you to everyone who made this year’s conference a success!

Nonimaging Optics XXI at SPIE Optics + Photonics in San Diego has wrapped up! It was a fantastic two days filled with inspiring talks by familiar and new faces. Thank you to everyone who made this happen, and to everyone who attended!

Congratulations to Harithra Navaratnam from the Lighting Research Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who won this year’s Best Student and Postdoc Presentation Award! Thank you to Keysight for sponsoring the prize.

We congratulate Ludo Haenen from Signify for the best submission to our 2026 Optical Design Competition, achieving an impressive efficiency of 40.6%! Ludo was also the winner of the 2025 design competition. Jean-Pierre Lauret from Gaggione SAS took second place with 36.4% efficiency, followed by John Hygelund from Arthrex in third place with 36.3%. Congratulations to all three, and thank you to everyone who took on the challenge!

Keep an eye out for our 2027 Optical Design Competition, Étendue’s Final Battle, coming soon! Let’s build upon our optical momentum, continue to grow our étendue, and keep this field going strong to tackle new challenges in energy, illumination, and beyond!

Are you working hard to finish your design for the Square Peg Challenge? We are giving you two additional weeks to refine, test, and submit your optical system.

Happy designing, and may the best design shine through!

Extended Deadline: June 15th, 2026

The preliminary program for Nonimaging Optics: Efficient Design for Illumination and Concentration XXI in San Diego is now available.

The schedule includes sessions on nonimaging theory, solar concentration and receivers, thermophotovoltaics, radiative cooling, LED optics, illumination applications, and the 2026 optical design competition.

If you want to participate in this program, we will consider post-deadline abstracts through 29 June 2026. These submissions will be considered for the poster session, or for an oral session if space becomes available.

Browse the 2026 conference program.

Did you want to prepare an abstract for the conference but didn’t have enough time? Great news! The abstract submission deadline has been extended to February 17th, 2026.

This gives you a few extra days to finalize and submit your work. Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of our twenty-first Nonimaging Optics conference. Check out the call for papers for full details.

We look forward to receiving your abstract and seeing you in San Diego this August!