M2S 2026: Stuttgart Hosts the World’s Leading Superconductivity Conference
From 19 to 24 July, the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology brought the international superconductivity community to Stuttgart, co-organizing the 2026 edition of the "Materials and Mechanisms of Superconductivity" (M2S) conference. More than 700 researchers attended — from early-career scientists to the field's most established names — for a week of talks, awards, and exchange spanning cuprates, nickelates, Moiré systems, heavy fermions, and beyond.
MPI-FKF Managing Director Bernhard Keimer co-organized the conference together with Matthieu Le Tacon of KIT.
Fourty Years of High Tc
2026 marks an important birthday in the condensed mattter physics. It was then, in fact, that Georg Bednorz and K. Alexander Müller discovered the first hight-temperature superconductor, a barium-doped lanthanum copper oxide (a cuprate ceramic) with a critical temperature of 35 Kelvin (-238 degrees Celsius).
Ever since, the interest in high-temperature superconductivity has not slowed down and the field has built ramifications creating a vastly rich area of research, as it has been possible to observe throughout the conference.
In the session entitled “40 years of High-Temperature Superconductivity”, the participants atteded three talks which meant to follow the development of the field.
The first speaker was Nobel Laureate Georg Bednorz (IBM) himself. In his talk, he retraced the necessary steps that eventaully lead him and his collaborators to the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity in perovskites, and discussed the technological relevance that high-temperature superconductors might have in our world, especially in the energy sector.
John Tranquada (Brookhaven National Laboratory) then talked about his work on high-temperature superconductors from an experimental perspective, and about the efforts that have gone throughout the years in the exploration of the cuprate phase diagram.
Patrick Lee closed the session by giving a talk in which he traced how the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity reshaped condensed matter physics, giving rise to concepts such as "attraction by repulsion" and gauge theories that remain central to the field today.
Many of the field's core puzzles — from strange metals to correlated insulators — remain unsolved to this day, and M2S 2026 reflected that ongoing energy: plenary talks, poster sessions every day, and six parallel sessions ran each day to cover the field's full breadth.
Three prizes for six careers
M2S traditionally marks the occasion for three major awards, each presented once every three years.
The John Bardeen Prize went to Dung-Hai Lee (University of California), Andrew J. Millis (Columbia University and the Flatiron Institute), and Michael R. Norman (Argonne National Laboratory), recognized for theoretical work that advanced the understanding of unconventional superconductors and laid the groundwork for interpreting today's leading experimental techniques.
The Bernd T. Matthias Prize was awarded to Changqing Jin (Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences) for discovering numerous new superconductors through high-pressure synthesis — including advances in high-Tc cuprates, the iron-pnictide LiFeAs, superhydrides such as CaH6 with a critical temperature above 200 K, and pressure-induced superconductivity in the topological insulator Bi2Te3.
The Kamerlingh Onnes Prize went to Richard L. Greene (University of Maryland) for the discovery of polymeric superconductors and his work on unconventional superconductors including cuprates, and to Yasutomo J. Uemura (Columbia University) for establishing the relationship between superfluid density and critical temperature across a broad range of unconventional superconductors.
Each awardee gave a lecture retracing the path to their discovery — a reminder of how science advances. Progress in science is far from being linear; it involves a great deal of confusion and uncertainty. The awardees showed how they came to terms with the problems they encountered along the way and how, through trial and error, they progressively built a coherent picture, resulting in actual scientific advancement.
Reflections from the week
Speaking with several attendees over the course of the week, we heard consistent praise for the quality of both the talks and the discussions that followed them.
MPI-FKF was well represented throughout the program, with several invited talks spanning topics from cuprates and nickelates to non-equilibrium dynamics, materials design, and organic superconductors, alongside further contributed talks and posters from the institute.
For a closer look at the conference in motion, you can watch our video recap on YouTube!
M2S Conference - Participant Impressions
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank everyone who helped make this conference such a pleasant and successful week — from the session chairs to the student volunteers who kept things running smoothly throughout. Our special thanks go to Regine Noack of MPI-FKF, our graphic designer, whose work — from the visual design to programming the conference app and keeping everything on schedule — was invaluable to the conference's success.
About M2S
Held every three years since 1988, the M2S conference brings together researchers in condensed matter physics, solid-state chemistry, and engineering to share the latest work in superconductivity. The first edition took place in Interlaken, Switzerland, shortly after Bednorz and Müller's discovery of high-temperature superconductivity. Later editions were held in Palo Alto, Kanazawa, Grenoble, Beijing, Houston, Rio de Janeiro, Dresden, Tokyo, Washington, Geneva, Beijing, and Vancouver.
M2S now moves on from Europe: the next edition, in three years' time, is expected to be held in Asia.
