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

170 papers, page 1 of 4

1. ICLR 2026Alternating Diffusion for Proximal Sampling with Zeroth Order Queries
2. ICLR 2026ATPO: ADAPTIVE TREE POLICY OPTIMIZATION FOR MULTI-TURN MEDICAL DIALOGUE
3. ICLR 2026Better Learning-Augmented Spanning Tree Algorithms via Metric Forest Completion
4. ICLR 2026Beyond Sequential Reranking: Reranker-Guided Search Improves Reasoning Intensive Retrieval
5. ICLR 2026Beyond the Heatmap: A Rigorous Evaluation of Component Impact in MCTS-Based TSP Solvers
6. ICLR 2026Birch SGD: A Tree Graph Framework for Local and Asynchronous SGD Methods
7. ICLR 2026Branch and Bound Search for Exact MAP Inference in Credal Networks
8. ICLR 2026Code World Models for General Game Playing
9. ICLR 2026Compositional Diffusion with Guided search for Long-Horizon Planning
10. ICLR 2026Compositional Generalization through Gradient Search in Nonparametric Latent Space
11. ICLR 2026DAMR: Efficient and Adaptive Context-Aware Knowledge Graph Question Answering with LLM-Guided MCTS
12. ICLR 2026Data Aware and Scalable Sensitivity Analysis for Decision Tree Ensembles
13. ICLR 2026DeepSearch: Overcome the Bottleneck of Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards via Monte Carlo Tree Search
14. ICLR 2026Discount Model Search for Quality Diversity Optimization in High-Dimensional Measure Spaces
15. ICLR 2026Does “Do Differentiable Simulators Give Better Policy Gradients?” Give Better Policy Gradients?
16. ICLR 2026Don't Throw Away Your Beams: Improving Consistency-based Uncertainties in LLMs via Beam Search
17. ICLR 2026Dr.LLM: Dynamic Layer Routing in LLMs
18. ICLR 2026DriftLite: Lightweight Drift Control for Inference-Time Scaling of Diffusion Models
19. ICLR 2026Efficient Approximate Posterior Sampling with Annealed Langevin Monte Carlo
20. ICLR 2026Efficient Sliced Wasserstein Distance Computation via Adaptive Bayesian Optimization
21. ICLR 2026EGG-SR: Embedding Symbolic Equivalence into Symbolic Regression via Equality Graph
22. ICLR 2026Embracing Discrete Search: A Reasonable Approach to Causal Structure Learning
23. ICLR 2026Expressive and Invariant Graph Learning via Canonical Tree Cover Neural Networks
24. ICLR 2026From Predictors to Samplers via the Training Trajectory
25. ICLR 2026Graph Random Features for Scalable Gaussian Processes
26. ICLR 2026Grouping Nodes with known Value Differences: A lossless UCT-based Abstraction Algorithm
27. ICLR 2026Hierarchical Encoding Tree with Modality Mixup for Cross-modal Hashing
28. ICLR 2026Hinge Regression Tree: A Newton Method for Oblique Regression Tree Splitting
29. ICLR 2026Hybrid Deep Searcher: Scalable Parallel and Sequential Search Reasoning
30. ICLR 2026Incentivizing LLM Reasoning via Reinforcement Learning with Functional Monte Carlo Tree Search
31. ICLR 2026Inference-time scaling of diffusion models through classical search
32. ICLR 2026Lean Finder: Semantic Search for Mathlib That Understands User Intents
33. ICLR 2026Learning Admissible Heuristics for A*: Theory and Practice
34. ICLR 2026LLM-Guided Evolutionary Program Synthesis for Quasi-Monte Carlo Design
35. ICLR 2026Local Entropy Search over Descent Sequences for Bayesian Optimization
36. ICLR 2026M$^2$-Miner: Multi-Agent Enhanced MCTS for Mobile GUI Agent Data Mining
37. ICLR 2026Mixed-Curvature Tree-Sliced Wasserstein Distance
38. ICLR 2026Multilevel Control Functional
39. ICLR 2026Obscure but Effective: Classical Chinese Jailbreak Prompt Optimization via Bio-Inspired Search
40. ICLR 2026One step further with Monte-Carlo sampler to guide diffusion better
41. ICLR 2026OR-PRM: A Process Reward Model for Algorithmic Problem in Operations Research
42. ICLR 2026Quasi-Monte Carlo Methods Enable Extremely Low-Dimensional Deep Generative Models
43. ICLR 2026Randomized Antipodal Search Done Right for Data Pareto Improvement of LLM Unlearning
44. ICLR 2026Regret-Guided Search Control for Efficient Learning in AlphaZero
45. ICLR 2026Revisiting Tree-Sliced Wasserstein Distance Through the Lens of the Fermat–Weber Problem
46. ICLR 2026RNE: plug-and-play diffusion inference-time control and energy-based training
47. ICLR 2026Score-based Greedy Search for Structure Identification of Partially Observed Linear Causal Models
48. ICLR 2026SealQA: Raising the Bar for Reasoning in Search-Augmented Language Models
49. ICLR 2026SelvaBox: A high‑resolution dataset for tropical tree crown detection
50. ICLR 2026Statistical Guarantees in the Search for Less Discriminatory Algorithms

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.