Let $T$ be a tree on $t$ vertices. We prove that for every positive integer $k$ and every graph $G$, either $G$ contains $k$ pairwise vertex-disjoint subgraphs each having a $T$ minor, or there exists a set $X$ of at most $t(k-1)$ vertices of $G$ such that $G-X$ has no $T$ minor. The bound on the size of $X$ is best possible and improves on an earlier $f(t)k$ bound proved by Fiorini, Joret, and Wood (2013) with some fast-growing function $f(t)$. Moreover, our proof is short and simple.

Given a graph $H$, let us denote by $f_\chi (H)$ and $f_\ell (H)$, respectively, the maximum chromatic number and the maximum list chromatic number of $H$-minor-free graphs. Hadwiger’s famous colouring conjecture from 1943 states that $f_\chi (K_t)=t-1$ for every $t \ge 2$. A closely related problem that has received significant attention in the past concerns $f_\ell (K_t)$, for which it is known that $2t-o(t) \le f_\ell (K_t) \le O(t (\!\log \log t)^6)$. Thus, $f_\ell (K_t)$ is bounded away from the conjectured value $t-1$ for $f_\chi (K_t)$ by at least a constant factor. The so-called $H$-Hadwiger’s conjecture, proposed by Seymour, asks to prove that $f_\chi (H)={\textrm{v}}(H)-1$ for a given graph $H$ (which would be implied by Hadwiger’s conjecture).

In this paper, we prove several new lower bounds on $f_\ell (H)$, thus exploring the limits of a list colouring extension of $H$-Hadwiger’s conjecture. Our main results are:

• For every $\varepsilon \gt 0$ and all sufficiently large graphs $H$ we have $f_\ell (H)\ge (1-\varepsilon )({\textrm{v}}(H)+\kappa (H))$, where $\kappa (H)$ denotes the vertex-connectivity of $H$.

• For every $\varepsilon \gt 0$ there exists $C=C(\varepsilon )\gt 0$ such that asymptotically almost every $n$-vertex graph $H$ with $\left \lceil C n\log n\right \rceil$ edges satisfies $f_\ell (H)\ge (2-\varepsilon )n$.

The first result generalizes recent results on complete and complete bipartite graphs and shows that the list chromatic number of $H$-minor-free graphs is separated from the desired value of $({\textrm{v}}(H)-1)$ by a constant factor for all large graphs $H$ of linear connectivity. The second result tells us that for almost all graphs $H$ with superlogarithmic average degree $f_\ell (H)$ is separated from $({\textrm{v}}(H)-1)$ by a constant factor arbitrarily close to $2$. Conceptually these results indicate that the graphs $H$ for which $f_\ell (H)$ is close to the conjectured value $({\textrm{v}}(H)-1)$ for $f_\chi (H)$ are typically rather sparse.

Strengthening Hadwiger’s conjecture, Gerards and Seymour conjectured in 1995 that every graph with no odd $K_t$ -minor is properly $(t-1)$ -colourable. This is known as the Odd Hadwiger’s conjecture. We prove a relaxation of the above conjecture, namely we show that every graph with no odd $K_t$ -minor admits a vertex $(2t-2)$ -colouring such that all monochromatic components have size at most $\lceil \frac{1}{2}(t-2) \rceil$ . The bound on the number of colours is optimal up to a factor of $2$ , improves previous bounds for the same problem by Kawarabayashi (2008, Combin. Probab. Comput. 17 815–821), Kang and Oum (2019, Combin. Probab. Comput. 28 740–754), Liu and Wood (2021, arXiv preprint, arXiv:1905.09495), and strengthens a result by van den Heuvel and Wood (2018, J. Lond. Math. Soc. 98 129–148), who showed that the above conclusion holds under the more restrictive assumption that the graph is $K_t$ -minor-free. In addition, the bound on the component-size in our result is much smaller than those of previous results, in which the dependency on $t$ was given by a function arising from the graph minor structure theorem of Robertson and Seymour. Our short proof combines the method by van den Heuvel and Wood for $K_t$ -minor-free graphs with some additional ideas, which make the extension to odd $K_t$ -minor-free graphs possible.

The clustered chromatic number of a class of graphs is the minimum integer $k$ such that for some integer $c$ every graph in the class is $k$ -colourable with monochromatic components of size at most $c$ . We determine the clustered chromatic number of any minor-closed class with bounded treedepth, and prove a best possible upper bound on the clustered chromatic number of any minor-closed class with bounded pathwidth. As a consequence, we determine the fractional clustered chromatic number of every minor-closed class.

Hadwiger’s conjecture asserts that every graph without a $K_t$ -minor is $(t-1)$ -colourable. It is known that the exact version of Hadwiger’s conjecture does not extend to list colouring, but it has been conjectured by Kawarabayashi and Mohar (2007) that there exists a constant $c$ such that every graph with no $K_t$ -minor has list chromatic number at most $ct$ . More specifically, they also conjectured that this holds for $c=\frac{3}{2}$ .

Refuting the latter conjecture, we show that the maximum list chromatic number of graphs with no $K_t$ -minor is at least $(2-o(1))t$ , and hence $c \ge 2$ in the above conjecture is necessary. This improves the previous best lower bound by Barát, Joret and Wood (2011), who proved that $c \ge \frac{4}{3}$ . Our lower-bound examples are obtained via the probabilistic method.

We present infinite analogues of our splinter lemma for constructing nested sets of separations. From these we derive several tree-of-tangles-type theorems for infinite graphs and infinite abstract separation systems.

What is the maximum number of copies of a fixed forest T in an n-vertex graph in a graph class $\mathcal {G}$ as $n\to \infty $ ? We answer this question for a variety of sparse graph classes $\mathcal {G}$ . In particular, we show that the answer is $\Theta (n^{\alpha _{d}(T)})$ where $\alpha _{d}(T)$ is the size of the largest stable set in the subforest of T induced by the vertices of degree at most d, for some integer d that depends on $\mathcal {G}$ . For example, when $\mathcal {G}$ is the class of k-degenerate graphs then $d=k$ ; when $\mathcal {G}$ is the class of graphs containing no $K_{s,t}$ -minor ( $t\geqslant s$ ) then $d=s-1$ ; and when $\mathcal {G}$ is the class of k-planar graphs then $d=2$ . All these results are in fact consequences of a single lemma in terms of a finite set of excluded subgraphs.

A (not necessarily proper) vertex colouring of a graph has clustering c if every monochromatic component has at most c vertices. We prove that planar graphs with maximum degree $\Delta$ are 3-colourable with clustering $O(\Delta^2)$. The previous best bound was $O(\Delta^{37})$. This result for planar graphs generalises to graphs that can be drawn on a surface of bounded Euler genus with a bounded number of crossings per edge. We then prove that graphs with maximum degree $\Delta$ that exclude a fixed minor are 3-colourable with clustering $O(\Delta^5)$. The best previous bound for this result was exponential in $\Delta$.

Let G be a graph of minimum degree at least k and let Gp be the random subgraph of G obtained by keeping each edge independently with probability p. We are interested in the size of the largest complete minor that Gp contains when p = (1 + ε)/k with ε > 0. We show that with high probability Gp contains a complete minor of order $\tilde{\Omega}(\sqrt{k})$ , where the ~ hides a polylogarithmic factor. Furthermore, in the case where the order of G is also bounded above by a constant multiple of k, we show that this polylogarithmic term can be removed, giving a tight bound.

We prove that the roots of the chromatic polynomials of planar graphs are dense in the interval between 32/27 and 4, except possibly in a small interval around τ + 2 where τ is the golden ratio. This interval arises due to a classical result of Tutte, which states that the chromatic polynomial of every planar graph takes a positive value at τ + 2. Our results lead us to conjecture that τ + 2 is the only such number less than 4.

We construct minor-closed addable families of graphs that are subcritical and contain all planar graphs. This contradicts (one direction of) a well-known conjecture of Noy.

Given a graph F, let st(F) be the number of subdivisions of F, each with a different vertex set, which one can guarantee in a graph G in which every edge lies in at least t copies of F. In 1990, Tuza asked for which graphs F and large t, one has that st(F) is exponential in a power of t. We show that, somewhat surprisingly, the only such F are complete graphs, and for every F which is not complete, st(F) is polynomial in t. Further, for a natural strengthening of the local condition above, we also characterize those F for which st(F) is exponential in a power of t.

The complete set of minimal obstructions for embedding graphs into the torus is still not determined. In this paper, we present all obstructions for the torus of connectivity 2. Furthermore, we describe the building blocks of obstructions of connectivity 2 for any orientable surface.

We define the notion of minor for weighted graphs. We prove that with this minor relation, the set of weighted graphs is directed. We also prove that, given any two weights on a connected graph with the same total weight, we can transform one into the other using a sequence of edge subdivisions and edge contractions.