A method for operating an internal combustion engine in HCCI mode, including: a) sensing a profile of a measured variable of a variable in a combustion chamber of a cylinder; b) identifying combustion feature(s) of a combustion event in a first combustion cycle based on the profile; c) modeling a first value of a state variable at a defined point in time after the first combustion cycle and before a second subsequent combustion cycle based on the identified combustion feature(s); d) determining desired target values of combustion feature(s) of a combustion event in the second subsequent combustion cycle; e) modeling a second value of the state variable at the defined point in time based on the target values; and f) applying control to the internal combustion engine starting at the defined point in time as a function of the first and the second value of the state variable.