Magnetic skyrmions and related topological spin textures have emerged as a central topic in condensed-matter physics, combining fundamental significance with potential for transformative applications in spintronics, magnonics, and beyond. Over the past decade, advances in material platforms, imaging techniques, theoretical modeling, and device concepts have established skyrmionics as a rapidly expanding field. At the same time, challenges remain in stabilizing, controlling, and integrating such textures into functional architectures, while novel phenomena such as antiskyrmions, higher-order skyrmions, hopfions, and antiferromagnetic textures arise. The 2026 Skyrmionics Roadmap represents a collective effort of many authors, providing a comprehensive perspective on the current state-of-the-art and the outlook for the coming years. In 33 focused sections, each co-authored by two researchers, we chart progress in theory and modeling, material systems, skyrmion dynamics, and skyrmion technologies. By offering a consolidated vision, this Roadmap aims to guide both fundamental research and application-driven efforts, accelerating the transition of skyrmionics from conceptual breakthroughs toward practical technologies.

The nanoscopic magnetic texture forming in a monolayer of iron on the (111) surface of iridium, Fe/Ir(111), is spatially modulated and uniaxially incommensurate with respect to the crystallographic periodicities. As a consequence, a low-energy magnetic excitation is expected that corresponds to the sliding of the texture along the incommensurate direction, i.e., a phason mode, which we explicitly confirm with atomistic spin simulations. Using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), we succeed to observe this phason mode experimentally. It can be excited by the STM tip, which leads to a random telegraph noise in the tunneling current that we attribute to the presence of two minima in the phason potential due to the presence of disorder in our sample. This provides the prospect of a floating phase in cleaner samples and, potentially, a commensurate-incommensurate transition as a function of external control parameters.

We explore the interplay between topology and eigenmodes by changing the stabilizing mechanism of skyrmion lattices (skX). We focus on two prototypical ultrathin films hosting an hexagonal (Pd/Fe/Ir(111)) and a square (Fe/Ir(111)) skyrmion lattice, which can both be described by an extended Heisenberg Hamiltonian. We first examine whether the Dzyaloshinkskii-Moriya, or the exchange interaction as the leading energy term affects the modes of the hexagonal skX of Pd/Fe/Ir(111). In all cases, we find that the lowest frequency modes correspond to internal degrees of freedom of individual skyrmions, and suggest a classification based on azimuthal and radial numbers $(l,p)$, with up to $l=6$, and $p=2$. We also show that the gyration behavior induced by an in-plane field corresponds to the excitation of $l=1$ deformation modes with varying radial numbers. Second, we examine the square lattice of skyrmions of Fe/Ir(111). Its stabilization mechanism is dominated by the 4-spin interaction. After relaxation, the unit cell does not carry a topological charge, and the eigenmodes do not correspond to internal skyrmion deformations. By reducing the 4-spin interaction, the integer topological charge is recovered, but the charge carriers do not possess internal degrees of freedom, nor are they separated by energy barriers. We conclude that a 4-spin dominated Hamiltonian does not yield skyrmion lattice solutions, and that therefore, a nontrivial topology does not imply the existence of skyrmions.

We show how a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction can be generated in an ultrathin metal film from the induced internal electric field created by an ultrashort electromagnetic pulse. This interaction does not require structural inversion-symmetry breaking, and its amplitude can be tuned depending on the amplitude of the field. We perform first-principles calculations to estimate the strength of the field-induced magnetoelectric coupling for ferromagnetic Fe, Co, and Ni, and antiferromagnetic Mn, as well as FePt alloys. Last, using atomistic simulations, we demonstrate how an isolated antiferromagnetic skyrmion can be coherently nucleated from the collinear background by an ultrashort pulse in electric field on a 100-fs timescale.

We look at paths to annihilation of first- and second-order skyrmions and antiskyrmions on the frustrated square lattice. Frustrated exchange has been found to arise from interface effects in certain systems where nanoscale interface skyrmions have been observed. We find that, in some regions of parameter space, the annihilation of skyrmionic solutions no longer occurs through an isotropic type of collapse, and instead involves the injection of the opposite topological charge into the system, by means of the nucleation of merons and antimerons. Alternatively, the second-order (anti)skyrmion may split into a bound (anti)skyrmion pair, which involves no change in the total topological charge. Lastly, the thermal stability of the skyrmionic solutions is discussed.

In this chapter, we begin by introducing the different terms in the classical Hamiltonian model for ferromagnets in Sect. 2.1. In Sect. 2.2, we give some elements of theory for ferromagnetic domain walls, which we use to introduce the key notions of winding number and topology. Finally, in Sect. 2.3, we define magnetic skyrmions and present the different types of systems in which they can be stabilized.

Generally speaking, the problem of annihilation rates of skyrmions pertains to the realm of rare events. That is, in a direct Langevin dynamics simulation, few—if any—annihilation events are observed. That is because the small timesteps [1] required to properly resolve the precessional dynamics of magnetic spin systems entails that direct simulations are, in practice, limited to a few hundred nanoseconds. Since skyrmions are required to be stable on the scale of ten years at room temperature for data storage applications, a better method than brute force simulations is required. In this chapter, we demonstrate the use of a path sampling method for the simulation of rare events, namely the forward flux sampling method, to compute collapse rates of magnetic skyrmions.

In this chapter, we firstly give the scope of Langer’s theory and how it can be applied to magnetic spins systems in Sects. 3.2 and 3.3. In that context, we detail the calculation of the main contributions entering in the rate prefactor. We then describe the geodesic nudged elastic band (GNEB) method [11] in Sect. 3.4, which enables the numerical computation of a minimum energy path on the complex multivariable energy surface, and the precise identification of the first-order saddle point along the path. Finally, in Sect. 3.5, we give details of the numerical implementation of the different building blocks in Langer’s theory on the atomistic spin lattice.

The thermal stability in nanostructured magnetic systems is an important issue for applications in information storage. From a theoretical and simulation perspective, an accurate prediction of thermally-activated transitions is a challenging problem because desired retention times are on the order of 10 years, while the characteristic time scale for precessional magnetization dynamics is of the order of nanoseconds. Here, we present a theoretical study of the thermal stability of magnetic elements in the form of perpendicularly-magnetized ferromagnetic disks using the forward flux sampling method, which is useful for simulating rare events. We demonstrate how rates of thermally-activated switching between the two uniformly-magnetized ``up'' and ``down'' states, which occurs through domain wall nucleation and propagation, vary with the interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, which affect the energy barrier separating these states. Moreover, we find that the average lifetimes differ by several orders of magnitude from estimates based on the commonly assumed value of 1 GHz for the attempt frequency.

We compute mean waiting times between thermally activated magnetization reversals in a nanodisk with parameters similar to a free CoFeB layer used in magnetic random access memories. By combining Langer's theory and forward flux sampling simulations, we show that the Arrhenius prefactor can take values up to 10(21) Hz, orders of magnitude beyond the value of 10(9) Hz typically assumed, and varies drastically as a function of material parameters. We show that the prefactor behaves like an exponential of the activation energy, which highlights a case of the Meyer-Neldel compensation rule. This suggests that modeling information retention times with a barrier-independent prefactor in such magnetic storage elements is not justified.

Ultrathin ferromagnets with frustrated exchange and the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction can support topological solitons such as skyrmions and antiskyrmions, which are metastable and can be considered particle-antiparticle counterparts. When spin-orbit torques are applied, the motion of an isolated antiskyrmion driven beyond its Walker limit can generate skyrmion-antiskyrmion pairs. Here, we use atomistic spin dynamics simulations to shed light on the scattering processes involved in this pair generation. Under certain conditions a proliferation of these particles and antiparticles can appear with a growth rate and production asymmetry that depend on the strength of the chiral interactions and the dissipative component of the spin-orbit torques. These features are largely determined by scattering processes between antiskyrmions, which can be elastic or result in bound states or annihilation.

We perform a direct comparison between Kramers' method in many dimensions, i.e., Langer's theory, adapted to magnetic spin systems, and a path sampling method in the form of forward flux sampling, as a means to compute the collapse rates of metastable magnetic skyrmions. We show that a good agreement is obtained between the two methods. We report variations of the attempt frequency associated with skyrmion collapse by three to four orders of magnitude when varying the applied magnetic field by 5% of the exchange strength, which confirms the existence of a strong entropic contribution to the lifetime of skyrmions. This demonstrates that in complex systems, the knowledge of the rate prefactor, in addition to the internal energy barrier, is essential in order to properly estimate a lifetime.

We study annihilation mechanisms of small first- and second-order skyrmions and antiskyrmions on the frustrated J(1)-J(2)-J(3) square lattice with broken inversion symmetry (Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction). We find that annihilation happens via the injection of the opposite topological charge in the form of meron or antimeron nucleation. Overall, the exchange frustration generates a complex energy landscape with not only many (meta)stable and unstable local energy solutions but also many possible paths connecting them. Whenever possible, we compute the activation energy and attempt frequency for the annihilation of isolated topological defects. In particular, we compare the average lifetime of the antiskyrmion calculated with transition state theory with direct Langevin simulations, for which excellent agreement is obtained.

We compute annihilation rates of metastable magnetic skyrmions using a form of Langer's theory in the intermediate-to-high damping (IHD) regime. For a Neel skyrmion, a Bloch skyrmion, and an antiskyrmion, we look at two possible paths to annihilation: collapse and escape through a boundary. We also study the effects of a curved versus a flat boundary, a second skyrmion, and a nonmagnetic defect. We find that the skyrmion's internal modes play a dominant role in the thermally activated transitions compared to the spin-wave excitations and that the relative contribution of internal modes depends on the nature of the transition process. Our calculations for a small skyrmion stabilized at zero field show that collapse on a defect is the most probable path. In the absence of a defect, the annihilation is largely dominated by escape mechanisms, even though in this case the activation energy is higher than that of collapse processes. Escape through a flat boundary is found more probable than through a curved boundary. The potential source of stability of metastable skyrmions is therefore found not to lie in high activation energies, nor in the dynamics at the transition state, but comes from entropic narrowing in the saddle point region which leads to lowered attempt frequencies. This narrowing effect is found to be primarily associated with the skyrmion's internal modes.