Exploration-Exploitation papers, 2023–2026

Key findings

• Exploration-Exploitation went from 47 papers in 2023 to 71 in 2026, roughly 1.5x in three years.
• NeurIPS publishes the most Exploration-Exploitation work: 93 papers from 2023 to 2026, 40% of the four-venue total.
• The fastest-growing overlap is with Reasoning Models: papers tagged with both rose from 1 in 2023 to 10 in 2026.
• Among the 5 topics under Recommenders and Ads, it ranks #4 by 2026 paper count; the fastest grower in the group, Click-Through Prediction, is up 2.6x versus 1.5x here.

Representative papers

Spread across years and venues so every edition shows up

• NeurIPS 2026Decentralized Q-Learning in Markov Potential Games
• ICML 2026Bandit Social Leaning Dynamics with Exploration Episodes
• ICLR 2026Laplacian Kernelized Bandit
• CVPR 2026Underground Plant Exploration Non-Destructive 3D Root Assessment with GPR Based
• NeurIPS 2025DUET: Dual-Perspective Pseudo Labeling and Uncertainty-aware Exploration & Exploitation Training for Source-Free Domain Adaptation
• ICML 2025Clustering Items through Bandit Feedback: Finding the Right Feature out of Many
• ICLR 2025B-STaR: Monitoring and Balancing Exploration and Exploitation in Self-Taught Reasoners
• CVPR 2025Dynamic Pseudo Labeling via Gradient Cutting for High-Low Entropy Exploration
• NeurIPS 2024Exploration, Exploitation, and Engagement in Multi-Armed Bandits with Abandonment
• ICML 2024A Contextual Combinatorial Bandit Approach to Negotiation
• ICLR 2024Dropout-Based Rashomon Set Exploration for Efficient Predictive Multiplicity Estimation
• CVPR 2024Instance-aware Exploration-Verification-Exploitation for Instance ImageGoal Navigation
• NeurIPS 2023Adaptive Algorithms for Relaxed Pareto Set Identification
• ICML 2023Curiosity in Hindsight: Intrinsic Exploration in Stochastic Environments
• ICLR 2023Combinatorial Pure Exploration of Causal Bandits
• CVPR 2023Exact-NeRF: An Exploration of a Precise Volumetric Parameterization for Neural Radiance Fields
• NeurIPS 2026Hit Expansion via Localized Exploration of Synthesizable Chemical Space
• ICML 2026Exploration-free Algorithms for Multi-group Mean Estimation
• ICLR 2026DIVERSE: Disagreement-Inducing Vector Evolution for Rashomon Set Exploration
• CVPR 2026From Exploration to Exploitation A Two-Stage Entropy RLVR Approach for

All Exploration-Exploitation papers

93 papers, page 1 of 2

1. NeurIPS 2026Agnostic Online Learning with Reliable Abstention
2. NeurIPS 2026Boosting Inference with Guided Reasoning: Stochastic Exploration for Recursive Models
3. NeurIPS 2026CIG: Exploration via Conditional Information Gain
4. NeurIPS 2026Contrastive Pretraining Scales Agentic Exploration
5. NeurIPS 2026Decentralized Q-Learning in Markov Potential Games
6. NeurIPS 2026ExpLang: Improved Exploration and Exploitation in LLM Reasoning with On-Policy Thinking Language Selection
7. NeurIPS 2026Exploration via Exploitation: The Blessing of Reward Diversity in Personalized Federated RL
8. NeurIPS 2026Hit Expansion via Localized Exploration of Synthesizable Chemical Space
9. NeurIPS 2026LACE: Lattice Attention for Cross-thread Exploration
10. NeurIPS 2026Near-Optimal Best-of-Both-Worlds Algorithms for Decoupled Exploration and Exploitation in Multi-armed Bandits
11. NeurIPS 2026Not all uncertainty is alike: volatility, stochasticity, and exploration
12. NeurIPS 2026Online Decision-Focused Learning under Semi-Bandit Feedback
13. NeurIPS 2026Optimal Recalibration of an Online Predictor
14. NeurIPS 2026PAC Learning with Bandit Feedback: Sharp Sample Complexity in the Realizable Setting
15. NeurIPS 2026Parameter Exploration for RLVR via Variational Learning
16. NeurIPS 2026Pure Exploration Beyond Reward Feedback: The Role of Post-Action Context
17. NeurIPS 2026Regret–Oracle Complexity Tradeoffs in Agnostic Online Learning
18. NeurIPS 2026ScreenSearch: Uncertainty-Aware OS Exploration
19. NeurIPS 2026Self-Evolution Reasoner: Continuous Optimization via Policy-Intrinsic Exploration and Exploitation
20. NeurIPS 2026Test-Time Scaling in the Wild: Why Exploitation, Not Exploration, Is the Bottleneck
21. NeurIPS 2026TGRL: Temperature-Grouped Reinforcement Learning for Efficient Exploration in LLMs
22. NeurIPS 2026The Illusion of Diversity: Aligning LLM Exploration via Effective Entropy
23. NeurIPS 2026The Power of a Random Sample in Online Algorithms
24. NeurIPS 2026Tree-Guided Identify Then Exploit: A Unified Framework of Pure Exploration and Regret Minimization for Dueling Bandits
25. NeurIPS 2026Value-Priced Uncertainty: A Family of PPO-Compatible Exploration Bonuses
26. NeurIPS 2025Balancing Performance and Costs in Best Arm Identification
27. NeurIPS 2025Bohdi: Heterogeneous LLM Fusion with Automatic Data Exploration
28. NeurIPS 2025Deployment Efficient Reward-Free Exploration with Linear Function Approximation
29. NeurIPS 2025DISCOVER: Automated Curricula for Sparse-Reward Reinforcement Learning
30. NeurIPS 2025DUET: Dual-Perspective Pseudo Labeling and Uncertainty-aware Exploration & Exploitation Training for Source-Free Domain Adaptation
31. NeurIPS 2025Exploration from a Primal-Dual Lens: Value-Incentivized Actor-Critic Methods for Sample-Efficient Online RL
32. NeurIPS 2025Exploration via Feature Perturbation in Contextual Bandits
33. NeurIPS 2025From Contextual Combinatorial Semi-Bandits to Bandit List Classification: Improved Sample Complexity with Sparse Rewards
34. NeurIPS 2025Geometry Meets Incentives: Sample-Efficient Incentivized Exploration with Linear Contexts
35. NeurIPS 2025Imagine Beyond ! Distributionally Robust Autoencoding for State Space Coverage in Online Reinforcement Learning
36. NeurIPS 2025Infrequent Exploration in Linear Bandits
37. NeurIPS 2025Instance-Dependent Regret Bounds for Nonstochastic Linear Partial Monitoring
38. NeurIPS 2025Non-Uniform Multiclass Learning with Bandit Feedback
39. NeurIPS 2025Novel Exploration via Orthogonality
40. NeurIPS 2025Order-Level Attention Similarity Across Language Models: A Latent Commonality
41. NeurIPS 2025Reinforcement Learning with Action Chunking
42. NeurIPS 2025Scalable Exploration via Ensemble++
43. NeurIPS 2025True Impact of Cascade Length in Contextual Cascading Bandits
44. NeurIPS 2025Uncertainty-Guided Exploration for Efficient AlphaZero Training
45. NeurIPS 2025Unveiling Transformer Perception by Exploring Input Manifolds
46. NeurIPS 2024Bandits with Preference Feedback: A Stackelberg Game Perspective
47. NeurIPS 2024Beyond Optimism: Exploration With Partially Observable Rewards
48. NeurIPS 2024Code Repair with LLMs gives an Exploration-Exploitation Tradeoff
49. NeurIPS 2024Effective Exploration Based on the Structural Information Principles
50. NeurIPS 2024Exploration by Learning Diverse Skills through Successor State Representations

FAQ

How many Exploration-Exploitation papers were published at NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML and CVPR from 2023 to 2026?

235 in total: 47 in 2023, 63 in 2024, 54 in 2025, 71 in 2026.

How many Exploration-Exploitation papers are at NeurIPS 2026?

NeurIPS 2026 has 25 Exploration-Exploitation papers, versus 20 the year before.

How many Exploration-Exploitation papers are at ICLR 2026?

ICLR 2026 has 23 Exploration-Exploitation papers, versus 10 the year before.

How many Exploration-Exploitation papers are at ICML 2026?

ICML 2026 has 19 Exploration-Exploitation papers, versus 21 the year before.

How many Exploration-Exploitation papers are at CVPR 2026?

CVPR 2026 has 4 Exploration-Exploitation papers, versus 3 the year before.

Which conference publishes the most Exploration-Exploitation papers?

NeurIPS, with 93 papers from 2023 to 2026.