This book constitutes refereed proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Mathematical Optimization Theory and Operations Research, MOTOR 2021, held in Irkutsk, Russia, in July 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held online.   The 31 full papers and 3 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 102 submissions. The papers in the volume are organised according to the following topical headings: continuous optimization; integer programming and combinatorial optimization; operational research applications; optimal control.