The 18th International Symposium on Intelligent Distributed Computing (IDC’2026) serves as an open forum for researchers, lecturers, and students to collaborate within the Intelligent and Distributed Computing communities. Intelligent Computing encompasses a hybrid palette of techniques, from classical AI and data science to swarm intelligence, machine learning, and cyber-physical security. Simultaneously, Distributed Computing focuses on developing complex systems composed of collaborating software components across diverse computational elements. IDC’2026 welcomes research covering all aspects of the field, specifically aiming to balance innovative theoretical ideas with their practical application across a wide variety of significant industrial cases and real-world scenarios.