The 4-volume set LNCS 16968 - 16971 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 31st European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, ESORICS 2026, held in Rome, Italy, during September 2026.

The total of 130 full papers included in the proceedings was carefully reviewed and selected from 882 submissions. The papers were organized in topical sections as follows: 

Part I: Software, Network and Protocol Security; 

Part II: Security and Machine Learning; Embedded, Mobile and CPS Security; 

Part III: Applied Crypto and MPC; Distributed Systems and Blockchain Security; 

Part IV: Governance, Privacy and Personal Data Protection; Post-Quantum Crypto.