Monte Carlo Tree Search papers, 2023–2026

Key findings

• Monte Carlo Tree Search went from 115 papers in 2023 to 278 in 2026, roughly 2.4x in three years.
• NeurIPS publishes the most Monte Carlo Tree Search work: 302 papers from 2023 to 2026, 39% of the four-venue total.
• The fastest-growing overlap is with AI Agents: papers tagged with both rose from 1 in 2023 to 26 in 2026.
• Among the 5 topics under Games and Planning, it ranks #3 by 2026 paper count; the fastest grower in the group, Classical Planning, is up 3.3x versus 2.4x here.

Representative papers

Spread across years and venues so every edition shows up

• NeurIPS 2026A Regularization-Based Approach to Public Belief State Search for Adversarial Games
• ICML 2026$\alpha$-PFN: Fast Entropy Search via In-Context Learning
• ICLR 2026Better Learning-Augmented Spanning Tree Algorithms via Metric Forest Completion
• CVPR 2026DRS-GUI Dynamic Region Search for Training-Free GUI Grounding
• NeurIPS 2025A Single-Swap Local Search Algorithm for k-Means of Lines
• ICML 2025Accelerating Large Language Model Reasoning via Speculative Search
• ICLR 2025Analysis of Linear Mode Connectivity via Permutation-Based Weight Matching: With Insights into Other Permutation Search Methods
• CVPR 2025DyFo: A Training-Free Dynamic Focus Visual Search for Enhancing LMMs in Fine-Grained Visual Understanding
• NeurIPS 2024Speculative Monte-Carlo Tree Search
• ICML 2024Accelerated Speculative Sampling Based on Tree Monte Carlo
• ICLR 2024Chain of Log-Concave Markov Chains
• CVPR 2024Hierarchical Correlation Clustering and Tree Preserving Embedding
• NeurIPS 2023Accelerating Monte Carlo Tree Search with Probability Tree State Abstraction
• ICML 2023A new near-linear time algorithm for k-nearest neighbor search using a compressed cover tree
• ICLR 2023A GNN-Guided Predict-and-Search Framework for Mixed-Integer Linear Programming
• CVPR 2023Bridging Search Region Interaction With Template for RGB-T Tracking
• NeurIPS 2026A Revisit of Hamiltonian Monte Carlo Efficiency on Bayesian Neural Networks
• ICML 2026A Bi-metric Framework for Efficient Nearest Neighbor Search
• ICLR 2026Dr.LLM: Dynamic Layer Routing in LLMs
• CVPR 2026UAST Unified Active Search and Tracking for Arbitrary Targets with

All Monte Carlo Tree Search papers

251 papers, page 2 of 6

51. ICML 2026Latent Guided Sampling for Combinatorial Optimization
52. ICML 2026LEAP: Zone-Aware MCTS for LLM Self-Speculative Decoding
53. ICML 2026Learning $U$-Statistics with Active Inference
54. ICML 2026Learning to Search and Searching to Learn for Generalization in Planning
55. ICML 2026Lookahead Sample Reward Guidance for Test-Time Scaling of Diffusion Models
56. ICML 2026Markov Chain Monte Carlo without Evaluating the Target: an Auxiliary Variable Approach
57. ICML 2026MARS: Modular Agent with Reflective Search for Automated AI Research
58. ICML 2026MAST: Motif-Augmented Diffusion with Search Tree for Spectroscopic Molecular Structure Elucidation
59. ICML 2026Matrix-Free GPU Semidefinite Programming for Quantum Ordered Search at the k=6 Frontier
60. ICML 2026MFH-NAS:A Hybrid Neural Architecture Search Framework for Multimodal Fusion Object Detection
61. ICML 2026MINT: Minimal Information Neuro-Symbolic Tree for Objective-Driven Knowledge-Gap Reasoning and Active Elicitation
62. ICML 2026Mitigating Premature Exploitation in Particle-based Monte Carlo for Inference-Time Scaling
63. ICML 2026Model-Free Robust Average-Reward Reinforcement Learning with Sample Complexity Analysis
64. ICML 2026Neural Attention Search Linear: Towards Adaptive Token-Level Hybrid Attention Models
65. ICML 2026Neural Low-Discrepancy Sequences
66. ICML 2026Neural Quantum States in Mixed Precision
67. ICML 2026Noisy Pairwise-Comparison Random Search for Smooth Nonconvex Optimization
68. ICML 2026NonZero: Interaction-Guided Exploration for Multi-Agent Monte Carlo Tree Search
69. ICML 2026OC-space: a Unifying Perspective on Verification of Tree Ensembles
70. ICML 2026On the Power of (Approximate) Reward Models for Inference-Time Scaling: Sequential Monte Carlo and Beyond
71. ICML 2026OneSearch: A Preliminary Exploration of the Unified End-to-End Generative Framework for E-commerce Search
72. ICML 2026Operator Splitting with Hamilton-Jacobi-based Proximals
73. ICML 2026Optimal Quantum Speedups for Repeatedly Nested Expectation Estimation
74. ICML 2026Path-dependent Discrete Amortized Inference
75. ICML 2026PINE: Pruning Boosted Tree Ensembles with Conformal In-Distribution Prediction Equivalence
76. ICML 2026Practical and Scalable Hamiltonian Monte Carlo Without the Metropolis Test
77. ICML 2026Probabilistic Bisection Algorithm Provably Achieves Exponential Convergence
78. ICML 2026Proximal-IMH: Proximal Posterior Proposals for Independent Metropolis–Hastings with Approximate Operators
79. ICML 2026Recursive Monte-Carlo Tree Search
80. ICML 2026RefChess: Training-Free Contextual Search for Zero-Shot Referring Image Segmentation
81. ICML 2026Reflective Hamiltonian Monte Carlo: Mixing Analysis and Application to Sampling on Stiefel Manifold
82. ICML 2026Reinforced Sequential Monte Carlo for Amortised Sampling
83. ICML 2026RL4RLA: Teaching ML to Discover Randomized Linear Algebra Algorithms Through Curriculum Design and Graph-Based Search
84. ICML 2026SCHUR-A*: Layer-wise Optimal Expert Pruning for MoEs via Schur-Complement Guided A* Search
85. ICML 2026Score-Repellent Monte Carlo: Toward Efficient Non-Markovian Sampler with Constant Memory in General State Spaces
86. ICML 2026Search or Accelerate: Confidence-Switched Position Beam Search for Diffusion Language Models
87. ICML 2026Search Space Synthesis for Parametric Functions
88. ICML 2026Self-Prophetic Decoding to Unlock Visual Search in LVLMs
89. ICML 2026Simple Approximation and Derivative Free Inference-Time Scaling for Diffusion Models via Sequential Monte Carlo on Path Measures
90. ICML 2026Sonar-TS: Search-Then-Verify Natural Language Querying for Time Series Databases
91. ICML 2026Stationary MMD Points
92. ICML 2026Structure-Induced Information for Rerooting Levin Tree Search
93. ICML 2026Structured Progressive Knowledge Activation for LLM-Driven Neural Architecture Search
94. ICML 2026SURGE: Approximation and Training Free Particle Filter for Diffusion Surrogate
95. ICML 2026SVL: Goal-Conditioned Reinforcement Learning as Survival Learning
96. ICML 2026Test-Time Graph Search for Goal-Conditioned Reinforcement Learning
97. ICML 2026TFTF: Training-Free Targeted Flow for Conditional Sampling
98. ICML 2026The (Marginal) Value of a Search Ad: An Online Causal Framework for Repeated Second-price Auctions
99. ICML 2026The Surprising Difficulty of Search in Model-Based Reinforcement Learning
100. ICML 2026The Trojan Knowledge: Bypassing Commercial LLM Guardrails via Harmless Prompt Weaving and Adaptive Tree Search

FAQ

How many Monte Carlo Tree Search papers were published at NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML and CVPR from 2023 to 2026?

773 in total: 115 in 2023, 144 in 2024, 236 in 2025, 278 in 2026.

How many Monte Carlo Tree Search papers are at NeurIPS 2026?

NeurIPS 2026 has 99 Monte Carlo Tree Search papers, versus 100 the year before.

How many Monte Carlo Tree Search papers are at ICLR 2026?

ICLR 2026 has 60 Monte Carlo Tree Search papers, versus 49 the year before.

How many Monte Carlo Tree Search papers are at ICML 2026?

ICML 2026 has 105 Monte Carlo Tree Search papers, versus 75 the year before.

How many Monte Carlo Tree Search papers are at CVPR 2026?

CVPR 2026 has 14 Monte Carlo Tree Search papers, versus 12 the year before.

Which conference publishes the most Monte Carlo Tree Search papers?

NeurIPS, with 302 papers from 2023 to 2026.