This volume contains eight survey articles by the invited speakers of the 31st British Combinatorial Conference, held at Cardiff University in July 2026. Each article provides an overview of recent developments in a current hot research topic in combinatorics. Topics covered include random planar graphs, temporal graphs, domino tilings, extremal poset theory, asymptotic enumeration, graph homomorphisms, combinatorial rigidity theory, logic and model theory, matroids, and graph bootstrap percolation. The authors are among the world's foremost researchers on their respective topics, but their surveys are accessible to nonspecialist readers: they are written clearly, with little prior knowledge assumed, and with pointers to the wider literature. Taken together, these surveys give a snapshot of the research frontier in contemporary combinatorics, helping researchers and graduate students in mathematics and theoretical computer science to keep abreast of the latest developments in the field.
1. Phase Transitions in Random Planar Graphs Mihyun Kang; 2. Extremal Poset Theory Maria Axenovich, Ryan R. Martin and Balázs Patkós; 3. Techniques for Taming Temporal Graphs Kitty Meeks; 4. Asymptotic Enumeration via Graph Containers and Entropy Jinyoung Park; 5. Graph Bootstrap Percolation – A Discovery of Slowness David Fabian, Patrick Morris and Tibor Szabó; 6. Rigidity of Graphs and Frameworks: A Matroid Theoretic Approach James Cruickshank, Bill Jackson, Tibor Jordán and Shin-ichi Tanigawa; 7. Monadic Second-Order Logic for Hypergraphs and Matroids Dillon Mayhew; 8. Domino Tilings Beyond 2D Caroline J. Klivans and Nicolau Saldanha.
Andrei Gagarin is Senior Lecturer in the School of Mathematics at Cardiff University. Roger Behrend is Personal Chair in the School of Mathematics at Cardiff University. Matthew Lettington is Senior Lecturer in the School of Mathematics at Cardiff University. Iskander Aliev is Personal Chair in the School of Mathematics at Cardiff University.