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 7 of 21

301. ICML 2026Experience is the Best Teacher: Motivating Effective Exploration in Reinforcement Learning for LLMs
302. ICML 2026Experience-Evolving Multi-Turn Tool-Use Agent with Hybrid Episodic–Procedural Memory
303. ICML 2026Exploration Hacking: Can LLMs Learn to Resist RL Training?
304. ICML 2026ExpWeaver: LLM Agents Learn from Experience via Latent RAG
305. ICML 2026FAB: A First-Order AB-based Gradient Algorithm for Distributed Bilevel Optimization over Time-Varying Directed Graphs
306. ICML 2026FactGuard: Agentic Video Misinformation Detection via Reinforcement Learning
307. ICML 2026Factored Causal Representation Learning for Robust Reward Modeling in RLHF
308. ICML 2026Factored Value Functions for Graph-Based Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
309. ICML 2026FAIL: Flow Matching Adversarial Imitation Learning for Image Generation
310. ICML 2026Faithful Mobile GUI Agents with Guided Advantage Estimator
311. ICML 2026Fast and Highly Expressive Policy Learning for Offline Reinforcement Learning via Bootstrapped Flow Q-Learning
312. ICML 2026Fast Mixing Steady-State Control in Markov Decision Processes
313. ICML 2026Fast Non-Episodic Finite-Horizon RL with K-Step Lookahead Thresholding
314. ICML 2026FIDIA: Function-Informed Sequence Design via Inference-Aligned Policy Optimization
315. ICML 2026Find, Fix, Reason: Context Repair for Video Reasoning
316. ICML 2026Finite-time Convergence Analysis of Actor-Critic with Evolving Reward
317. ICML 2026Finite-Width Neural Tangent Kernels from Feynman Diagrams
318. ICML 2026FIRE: Learning to Navigate and Act on Real-World Files via Stateful Reinforcement Learning
319. ICML 2026FLAC: Maximum Entropy RL via Kinetic Energy Regularized Bridge Matching
320. ICML 2026FocalPolicy: Frequency-Optimized Chunking and Locally Anchored Flow Matching for Coherent Visuomotor Policy
321. ICML 2026Focus-Then-Contact: Speeding Up Robotic Contact-Rich Task Learning with Affordance-Guided Real-World Residual Reinforcement Learning
322. ICML 2026FOCUS: Forcing In-Context Object Localization through Visual Support Constraints and Policy Optimization
323. ICML 2026ForceForget: Reinforcement Concept Removal for Enhancing Safety in Text-to-Image Models
324. ICML 2026ForesightKV: Optimizing KV Cache Eviction for Reasoning Models by Learning Long-Term Contribution
325. ICML 2026Formalizing Learning from Language Feedback with Provable Guarantees
326. ICML 2026FoundObj: Self-supervised Foundation Models as Rewards for Label-free 3D Object Segmentation
327. ICML 2026FourTune: Towards Fully 4-Bit Efficient Post-Training for Diffusion Models
328. ICML 2026Fox in the Henhouse: Supply-Chain Backdoor Attacks Against Reinforcement Learning
329. ICML 2026Frictional Q-Learning
330. ICML 2026From Absolute to Relative: Rethinking Reward Shaping in Group-Based Reinforcement Learning
331. ICML 2026From Blind Spots to Gains: Diagnostic-Driven Iterative Training for Large Multimodal Models
332. ICML 2026From Generative to Episodic: Sample-Efficient Replicable Reinforcement Learning
333. ICML 2026From Guessing to Placeholding: A Cost-Theoretic Framework for Uncertainty-Aware Code Completion
334. ICML 2026From Interactions to Principles: Experience-Driven Self-Distillation for Evolving LLM Agents
335. ICML 2026From Lyapunov Analysis to Algorithm Design in two-sided PL Minimax Optimization
336. ICML 2026From Optimization to Generalization under Heavy-Tailed Data: The Role of Gradient Clipping
337. ICML 2026From Outcomes to Actions: Leveraging Hindsight for Long-Horizon Language Agent Training
338. ICML 2026From Parameters to Feature Space: Task Arithmetic for Backdoor Mitigation in Model Merging
339. ICML 2026From Player to Master: Enhancing Test-Time Learning of LLM Agents via Reinforcement Learning over Memory
340. ICML 2026From Poisoned to Aware: Fostering Backdoor Self-Awareness in LLMs
341. ICML 2026From Prior to Pro: Efficient Skill Mastery via Distribution Contractive RL Finetuning
342. ICML 2026From Reasoning Traces to Reusable Modules: Understanding Compositional Generalization in Language Model Reasoning
343. ICML 2026From Reward-Free Representations to Preferences: Rethinking Offline Preference-Based Reinforcement Learning
344. ICML 2026From Shortcuts to Reasoning: Robust Post-Training of Theory of Mind with Reinforcement Learning
345. ICML 2026From Static Constraints to Dynamic Adaptation: Sample-Level Constraint Relaxation for Offline-to-Online Reinforcement Learning
346. ICML 2026From Teacher Pathways to Invariant Manifolds: Consensus Subspace Distillation for TSFMs
347. ICML 2026Functional building blocks of neural networks: from network motifs to collective dynamics
348. ICML 2026G$^2$RPO: Geometric GRPO; Escaping LLM's Reasoning Rut to Break Accuracy--Entropy Trade-off
349. ICML 2026GameVerse: Can Vision-Language Models Learn from Video-based Reflection?
350. ICML 2026GDPO: Group reward-Decoupled Normalization Policy Optimization for Multi-reward RL Optimization

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.