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

1,827 papers, page 2 of 37

51. ICLR 2026ARROW: An Adaptive Rollout and Routing Method for Global Weather Forecasting
52. ICLR 2026ArtVIP: Articulated Digital Assets of Visual Realism, Modular Interaction, and Physical Fidelity for Robot Learning
53. ICLR 2026Asymmetric Proximal Policy Optimization: mini-critics boost LLM reasoning
54. ICLR 2026Asynchronous Policy Gradient Aggregation for Efficient Distributed Reinforcement Learning
55. ICLR 2026ATGen: Adversarial Reinforcement Learning for Test Case Generation
56. ICLR 2026ATPO: ADAPTIVE TREE POLICY OPTIMIZATION FOR MULTI-TURN MEDICAL DIALOGUE
57. ICLR 2026Attention as a Compass: Efficient Exploration for Process-Supervised RL in Reasoning Models
58. ICLR 2026AttriCtrl: A Generalizable Framework for Controlling Semantic Attribute Intensity in Diffusion Models
59. ICLR 2026Auto-RT: Automatic Jailbreak Strategy Exploration for Red-Teaming Large Language Models
60. ICLR 2026AutoDrive-R²: Incentivizing Reasoning and Self-Reflection Capacity for VLA Model in Autonomous Driving
61. ICLR 2026Automating the Refinement of Reinforcement Learning Specifications
62. ICLR 2026AutoQD: Automatic Discovery of Diverse Behaviors with Quality-Diversity Optimization
63. ICLR 2026AutoTool: Automatic Scaling of Tool-Use Capabilities in RL via Decoupled Entropy Constraints
64. ICLR 2026AWM: Accurate Weight-Matrix Fingerprint for Large Language Models
65. ICLR 2026Balancing the Experts: Unlocking LoRA-MoE for GRPO via Mechanism-Aware Rewards
66. ICLR 2026BaseReward: A Strong Baseline for Multimodal Reward Model
67. ICLR 2026Bayes Adaptive Monte Carlo Tree Search for Offline Model-based Reinforcement Learning
68. ICLR 2026Bayesian Ensemble for Sequential Decision-Making
69. ICLR 2026Bayesian Robust Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Against Unknown Adversaries
70. ICLR 2026Belief-Based Offline Reinforcement Learning for Delay-Robust Policy Optimization
71. ICLR 2026Benchmarking Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning in Power Grid Operations
72. ICLR 2026Benefits and Pitfalls of Reinforcement Learning for Language Model Planning: A Theoretical Perspective
73. ICLR 2026Better Bounds for the Distributed Experts Problem
74. ICLR 2026Beware Untrusted Simulators -- Reward-Free Backdoor Attacks in Reinforcement Learning
75. ICLR 2026Beyond Binary Rewards: Training LMs to Reason About Their Uncertainty
76. ICLR 2026Beyond Distributions: Geometric Action Control for Continuous Reinforcement Learning
77. ICLR 2026Beyond English-Centric Training: How Reinforcement Learning Improves Cross-Lingual Reasoning in LLMs
78. ICLR 2026Beyond Magic Words: Sharpness-Aware Prompt Evolving for Robust Large Language Models with TARE
79. ICLR 2026Beyond Markovian: Reflective Exploration via Bayes-Adaptive RL for LLM Reasoning
80. ICLR 2026Beyond Noisy-TVs: Noise-Robust Exploration Via Learning Progress Monitoring
81. ICLR 2026Beyond Pass@ 1: Self-Play with Variational Problem Synthesis Sustains RLVR
82. ICLR 2026Beyond Penalization: Diffusion-based Out-of-Distribution Detection and Selective Regularization in Offline Reinforcement Learning
83. ICLR 2026Beyond RLHF and NLHF: Population-Proportional Alignment under an Axiomatic Framework
84. ICLR 2026Beyond Simple Graphs: Neural Multi-Objective Routing on Multigraphs
85. ICLR 2026Beyond Softmax and Entropy: Convergence Rates of Policy Gradients with $\boldsymbol{f}$-SoftArgmax Parameterization $\&$ Coupled Regularization
86. ICLR 2026BFM-Zero: A Promptable Behavioral Foundation Model for Humanoid Control Using Unsupervised Reinforcement Learning
87. ICLR 2026Boolean Satisfiability via Imitation Learning
88. ICLR 2026Boosting Multi-Domain Reasoning of LLMs via Curvature-Guided Policy Optimization
89. ICLR 2026BoreaRL: A Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning Environment for Climate-Adaptive Boreal Forest Management
90. ICLR 2026BOTS: A Unified Framework for Bayesian Online Task Selection in LLM Reinforcement Finetuning
91. ICLR 2026Bradley-Terry and Multi-Objective Reward Modeling Are Complementary
92. ICLR 2026Breaking Barriers: Do Reinforcement Fine-tuning Gains Transfer To Unseen Domains?
93. ICLR 2026Breaking Safety Paradox with Feasible Dual Policy Iteration
94. ICLR 2026Breaking the SFT Plateau: Multimodal Structured Reinforcement Learning for Chart-to-Code Generation
95. ICLR 2026Breaking the Total Variance Barrier: Sharp Sample Complexity for Linear Heteroscedastic Bandits with Fixed Action Set
96. ICLR 2026BRIDGE: Bi-level Reinforcement Learning for Dynamic Group Structure in Coalition Formation Games
97. ICLR 2026Bridging Draft Policy Misalignment: Group Tree Optimization for Speculative Decoding
98. ICLR 2026Bridging Successor Measure and Online Policy Learning with Flow Matching-Based Representations
99. ICLR 2026Bridging the performance-gap between target-free and target-based reinforcement learning
100. ICLR 2026Buffer Matters: Unleashing the Power of Off-Policy Reinforcement Learning in Large Language Model Reasoning

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.