8–11 December 2025 | SuperC of RWTH Aachen University, Germany.

The 38th Picture Coding Symposium (PCS) brought together researchers, engineers, and industry leaders from around the world at RWTH Aachen University for four days of discussion and discovery focused on the design, implementation, and application of visual data coding and processing. In 2025, PCS hosted the well-known Challenge on Learned Image Compression (CLIC) for the first time. The challenge aims to advance image and video compression by leveraging machine learning and computer vision. 

PCS is the longest-running conference in image processing and compression. Since its first edition in 1969, PCS has been held every 18 months in countries around the world, alternating among North America, Europe, and Asia. This year’s program featured more than 70 papers and three distinguished keynote speakers:

• Prof. Enzo Tartaglione (Institute Politechnique de Paris): Coding 3D Gaussian Splatting: From Theory to Real-Time Rendering
• Dr. Théo Ladune (Orange): Learned image and video compression: from autoencoders to overfitted codecs
• Dr. Marta Karczewicz (Qualcomm Inc.): Video coding in hardware

PCS 2025 attracted numerous prominent editors and chairs from the ISO/IEC and ITU-T image and video coding standardization committees, including Prof. Jens-Rainer Ohm, who retired from his university position at RWTH Aachen University in 2025. Session topics ranged from image and video coding and video quality evaluation to Gaussian splatting, point cloud coding, and mesh coding, underscoring PCS’s role as a hub for collaboration between academia and industry. An industry highlight of PCS 2025 was the panel discussion “Codecs 2040: The Future of Video Compression.”

The next PCS is planned for summer 2027, following the symposium’s 18-month cycle. Those interested in joining the PCS community or contributing to future editions can contact Mathias Wien, the PCS 2025 General Chair, at wien@ieee.org.