Reinforcement Learning papers, 2023–2026

Key findings

• Reinforcement Learning went from 1,070 papers in 2023 to 2,985 in 2026, roughly 2.8x in three years.
• NeurIPS publishes the most Reinforcement Learning work: 2,494 papers from 2023 to 2026, 36% of the four-venue total.
• The fastest-growing overlap is with Reasoning Models: papers tagged with both rose from 9 in 2023 to 437 in 2026.

Representative papers

Spread across years and venues so every edition shows up

• NeurIPS 2026\texttt{FEROM}: Frontier Endogenous Reveal-Order Marginal Policy Optimization for Masked Diffusion LMs
• ICML 2026$\text{DT}^\text{2}$: Decision-Targeted Digital Twins
• ICLR 2026$\nabla$-Reasoner: LLM Reasoning via Test-Time Gradient Descent in Textual Space
• CVPR 2026A Causal Marriage between VLM and IRM from Understanding to
• NeurIPS 2025$\texttt{G1}$: Teaching LLMs to Reason on Graphs with Reinforcement Learning
• ICML 2025A Computationally Efficient Algorithm for Infinite-Horizon Average-Reward Linear MDPs
• ICLR 2025$\phi$-Update: A Class of Policy Update Methods with Policy Convergence Guarantee
• CVPR 2025All-Optical Nonlinear Diffractive Deep Network for Ultrafast Image Denoising
• NeurIPS 2024A Critical Evaluation of AI Feedback for Aligning Large Language Models
• ICML 2024${\rm E}(3)$-Equivariant Actor-Critic Methods for Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
• ICLR 2024A Black-box Approach for Non-stationary Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning
• CVPR 2024DMR: Decomposed Multi-Modality Representations for Frames and Events Fusion in Visual Reinforcement Learning
• NeurIPS 2023“Why Not Looking backward?” A Robust Two-Step Method to Automatically Terminate Bayesian Optimization
• ICML 2023A Connection between One-Step RL and Critic Regularization in Reinforcement Learning
• ICLR 2023$O(T^{-1})$ Convergence of Optimistic-Follow-the-Regularized-Leader in Two-Player Zero-Sum Markov Games
• CVPR 2023"Seeing" Electric Network Frequency From Events
• NeurIPS 2026$\varphi$TD: Distributional Reinforcement Learning using Characteristic Functions
• ICML 2026$\textit{S}$-SPPO: Semantic-Calibrated Self-Play Preference Optimization
• ICLR 2026$AutoDrive\text{-}P^3$: Unified Chain of Perception–Prediction–Planning Thought via Reinforcement Fine-Tuning
• CVPR 2026AdaptVision Efficient Vision-Language Models via Adaptive Visual Acquisition

All Reinforcement Learning papers

1,021 papers, page 18 of 21

851. ICML 2026Stochastic Gradient Variational Inference with Price's Gradient Estimator from Bures-Wasserstein to Parameter Space
852. ICML 2026Stochastic Minimum-Cost Reach-Avoid Reinforcement Learning
853. ICML 2026Strat-Reasoner: Reinforcing Strategic Reasoning of LLMs in Multi-Agent Games
854. ICML 2026Stratified GRPO: Handling Structural Heterogeneity in Reinforcement Learning of LLM Search Agents
855. ICML 2026StructMAR: Structure-Aware Masked Autoregression for Explicit Layout Alignment in Text-to-Image Generation
856. ICML 2026Structure-Induced Information for Rerooting Levin Tree Search
857. ICML 2026Structured Expert Routing with Multi-View Task Priors for Offline Meta-Reinforcement Learning
858. ICML 2026Student-Centered Distillation Narrows the Agentic Gap Between Small and Large LLMs
859. ICML 2026Success-Conditioning as Policy Improvement: The Optimization Problem Solved by Imitating Success
860. ICML 2026SuCo: Sufficiency-guided Continuous Adaptive Reasoning
861. ICML 2026SVL: Goal-Conditioned Reinforcement Learning as Survival Learning
862. ICML 2026SWE-MiniSandbox: Container-Free Reinforcement Learning for Building Software Engineering Agents
863. ICML 2026SWE-rebench V2: Language-Agnostic SWE Task Collection at Scale
864. ICML 2026T$^2$PO: Uncertainty-Guided Exploration Control for Stable Multi-Turn Agentic Reinforcement Learning
865. ICML 2026TABX: A High-Throughput Sandbox Battle Simulator for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
866. ICML 2026Tackling Length Inflation Without Trade-offs: Group Relative Reward Rescaling for Reinforcement Learning
867. ICML 2026TACTIC: Task-Aware Sparse Coordination Graphs for Multi-Task Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning
868. ICML 2026Tailoring the Training: Difficulty-Aware Learning Strategy Allocation for Large Language Models
869. ICML 2026Taming Aleatoric Impulse in Off-Policy Reinforcement Learning
870. ICML 2026TAMPO: Task- and Model-Aware Automatic Prompt Optimization for Auto-Routing in LLM-based Systems
871. ICML 2026Target-Driven Policy Optimization for Sequential Counterfactual Outcome Control
872. ICML 2026Task-Aware Exploration via a Predictive Bisimulation Metric
873. ICML 2026TaskLoom: Weaving Knowledge Across Tasks in World Models
874. ICML 2026TDM-R1: Reinforcing Few-Step Diffusion Models with Non-Differentiable Reward
875. ICML 2026Teaching Models to Teach Themselves: Reasoning at the Edge of Learnability
876. ICML 2026Temporal Difference Calibration in Sequential Tasks: Application to Vision-Language-Action Models
877. ICML 2026Temporal Difference Learning for Diffusion Models
878. ICML 2026Temporal Self-Rewarding Language Models: Decoupling Chosen-Rejected via Past-Future
879. ICML 2026Temporal-Aware Reasoning Optimization for Video Temporal Grounding
880. ICML 2026Test-Time Graph Search for Goal-Conditioned Reinforcement Learning
881. ICML 2026Test-time Offline Reinforcement Learning on Goal-related Experience
882. ICML 2026Test-Time Reinforcement Learning for Flow Matching
883. ICML 2026TexEditor: Structure-Preserving Text-Driven Texture Editing
884. ICML 2026Text Before Vision: Staged Knowledge Injection Matters for Agentic RLVR in Ultra-High-Resolution Remote Sensing Understanding
885. ICML 2026Text Generation as Continuous Latent Dynamics via Reinforcement Learning
886. ICML 2026TGPO: Efficient Policy Optimization through Sequence Anchor and Information Gating
887. ICML 2026The Art of Interrogation: Consistency Amplifies Factuality in Spatial Reasoning
888. ICML 2026The Axiomatic Value of Regularization in AI Alignment from Human Preferences
889. ICML 2026The Cost of Commitment in Option-Based Hierarchical RL
890. ICML 2026The Decrypto Benchmark for Multi-Agent Reasoning and Theory of Mind
891. ICML 2026The Easy, the Hard, and the Learnable: Confidence and Difficulty-Adaptive Policy Optimization for LLM Reasoning
892. ICML 2026The Flexibility Trap: Rethinking the Value of Arbitrary Order in Diffusion Language Models
893. ICML 2026The Hidden Link between RLHF and Contrastive Learning
894. ICML 2026The Implicit Bias of Depth: From Neural Collapse to Softmax Codes
895. ICML 2026The Obfuscation Atlas: Mapping Where Honesty Emerges in RLVR with Deception Probes
896. ICML 2026The Optimal Token Baseline: Variance Reduction for Long-Horizon LLM-RL
897. ICML 2026The Oversight Game: Learning to Cooperatively Balance an AI Agent's Safety and Autonomy
898. ICML 2026The Role of Target Update Frequencies in Q-Learning
899. ICML 2026The Sign Estimator: Preference Modeling for LLM Alignment under Heterogeneity
900. ICML 2026The Surprising Difficulty of Search in Model-Based Reinforcement Learning

FAQ

How many Reinforcement Learning papers were published at NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML and CVPR from 2023 to 2026?

6,885 in total: 1,070 in 2023, 1,190 in 2024, 1,640 in 2025, 2,985 in 2026.

How many Reinforcement Learning papers are at NeurIPS 2026?

NeurIPS 2026 has 760 Reinforcement Learning papers, versus 784 the year before.

How many Reinforcement Learning papers are at ICLR 2026?

ICLR 2026 has 911 Reinforcement Learning papers, versus 379 the year before.

How many Reinforcement Learning papers are at ICML 2026?

ICML 2026 has 1,021 Reinforcement Learning papers, versus 405 the year before.

How many Reinforcement Learning papers are at CVPR 2026?

CVPR 2026 has 293 Reinforcement Learning papers, versus 72 the year before.

Which conference publishes the most Reinforcement Learning papers?

NeurIPS, with 2,494 papers from 2023 to 2026.