Focus on the International Conference of Weighing 2026

We are honored and delighted to serve as Guest Editors of this special issue of the OIML Bulletin, which commemorates the ICW2026 (International Conference of Weighing), held from 8 to 10 June 2026 at the Kitakyushu International Convention Center in Japan.

The ICW is organized jointly by international organizations and industrial associations from various countries involved in mass measurement. This was the second edition of the ICW, following the very successful first edition, which took place in Hamburg, Germany, in 2023.

ICW was established to share the latest information in the field of mass measurement, promote networking both nationally and internationally, and enhance the presence of the weighing industry. This year's conference carried the theme Innovative Weighing Solutions for a Sustainable World, and participants discussed how weighing and measurement can contribute to building a sustainable society.

We were honored to welcome Professor Tshilidzi Marwala, Rector of the United Nations University and United Nations Under-Secretary-General, and Professor Takaaki Kajita, Nobel Laureate in Physics, as keynote speakers in the plenary sessions. Their participation contributed greatly to making the conference both successful and prestigious. We would also like to express our sincere gratitude to the many other invited speakers who generously contributed to the conference.

The presentations were organized into three oral sessions – scientific metrology, industrial metrology, and legal metrology – as well as a poster session. A proceedings booklet containing the abstracts submitted by the presenters was distributed during the conference. This special issue features presentations related to legal metrology. For the papers included in this issue, the authors were invited to expand their conference abstracts by incorporating additional experimental results, further discussion, and considerations of their relevance to legal metrology. As a result, the papers provide a more detailed presentation of the research outcomes. We hope that this special issue will help a wide range of readers, including those who were unable to attend ICW2026, to learn more about the presentations and discussions held at the conference.

We express our sincere gratitude to the Organizing Committee, cooperating organizations, sponsors, speakers, participants, and everyone else who contributed to the successful organization of ICW2026 and the publication of this special issue.

Legal metrology is an essential foundation for achieving a sustainable society and is an important framework that supports economic activities and people's daily lives throughout the world. We sincerely hope that the successful organization of ICW2026 and the publication of this special issue will contribute, even in a small way, to the further development of legal metrology and the promotion of international cooperation.