Reinforcement Learning papers, 2023–2026
Policy optimization, offline RL, and decision learning from interaction
Scope: NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML and CVPR, 2023–2026. 6,885 papers are tagged with this topic.
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.
Papers per venue
Counts by year and venue
| Year | NeurIPS | ICLR | ICML | CVPR | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 484 | 233 | 297 | 56 | 1,070 |
| 2024 | 466 | 304 | 356 | 64 | 1,190 |
| 2025 | 784 | 379 | 405 | 72 | 1,640 |
| 2026 | 760 | 911 | 1,021 | 293 | 2,985 |
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
2,494 papers, page 7 of 50
- NeurIPS 2026Incentivizing Medical Vision Capabilities from Large-Scale Multimodal Pre-training
- NeurIPS 2026Independent Learning of Nash Equilibria in Partially Observable Markov Potential Games with Decoupled Dynamics
- NeurIPS 2026Inferring learning rules in deep neural network architectures from animal learning data
- NeurIPS 2026Information Templates: A New Paradigm for Intelligent Active Feature Acquisition
- NeurIPS 2026Informed Posterior Sampling: More Efficient Online Learning with Few Offline Demonstrations in Average-Reward MDPs
- NeurIPS 2026Instability of Meta-Learning Intrinsic Rewards for Policy Gradient Reinforcement Learning
- NeurIPS 2026Intent Factored Generation: Unleashing the Diversity in Your Language Model
- NeurIPS 2026Interactive Combinatorial Reinforcement Learning for Knowledge Graph Reasoning
- NeurIPS 2026Interleaved Latent Thinking and Adaptive Termination for Efficient Reasoning LLMs
- NeurIPS 2026Intra-Option Fitted Q-Evaluation: Evaluating Hierarchical Policies from Non-Hierarchical Data
- NeurIPS 2026Inverse Linear Bandits via Linear Programs
- NeurIPS 2026Irreducible Supervision Enables Compositional Generalization in Post-Training
- NeurIPS 2026Is Backpropagation Optimal? When Synthetic Gradients Improve Sample Efficiency
- NeurIPS 2026It Takes Two: Complementary Self-Distillation for Contextual Integrity in LLMs
- NeurIPS 2026Iterative Gumbel Planning for Continuous Control
- NeurIPS 2026Iterative Latent Refinement for Value Learning in Offline Goal-Conditioned RL
- NeurIPS 2026Joint Optimization of Tool Creation and Use for Large Language Model Agents
- NeurIPS 2026Jointly Reinforcing Diversity and Quality in Language Model Generations
- NeurIPS 2026Jump Start Your Policy Learning with Lessons from 145,000 Training Runs
- NeurIPS 2026KaliBench: A Fine-Grained Benchmark for Cybersecurity Tool Use on Kali Linux with Runtime-Free Verifiable Rewards
- NeurIPS 2026Kernel Value Regression in Offline Reinforcement Learning
- NeurIPS 2026KNN Implementation Details Can Dramatically Change Performance: An Example from Cover Trees
- NeurIPS 2026Know Your Task, Learn It Right: Task-Aware Optimistic Value Learning for Multi-Task Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
- NeurIPS 2026Knowing When to Ask: Segment-Level Credit Assignment for LLM Tool Use
- NeurIPS 2026kVNN: Learnable Volterra Network Kernels
- NeurIPS 2026LADDERS: Length-Aware Data Distribution and Existing-Response Speculation for Fast RL Rollout Generation
- NeurIPS 2026LaST-VLA: Thinking in Latent Spatio-Temporal Space for Vision-Language-Action in Autonomous Driving
- NeurIPS 2026Latency-Conditioned Selection Bias in RLHF
- NeurIPS 2026Latent Reasoning in Continuous Space for Unified Multimodal Models
- NeurIPS 2026LEAD: Length-Efficient Adaptive and Dynamic Reasoning for Large Language Models
- NeurIPS 2026Learning Better Certified Models from Empirically-Robust Teachers
- NeurIPS 2026Learning Chance-Constrained MDPs with Bellman Distributional Certificates
- NeurIPS 2026Learning CLI Agents with Structured Action Credit under Selective Observation
- NeurIPS 2026Learning Collision‑Free Dispatch Policies for Route‑Wise Decision‑Dependent Anomaly Detection
- NeurIPS 2026Learning Contextual Causal Dynamics for Robust Exploration in Reinforcement Learning
- NeurIPS 2026Learning Cost-Efficient Autoscaling for Latency-Constrained Disaggregated LLM Serving
- NeurIPS 2026Learning Distributions from Multiple Data Providers
- NeurIPS 2026Learning From Failures: Efficient Reinforcement Learning Control with Episodic Memory
- NeurIPS 2026Learning from Language Feedback via Variational Policy Distillation
- NeurIPS 2026Learning Generalizable Hand-Object Tracking Control without Human Demonstrations
- NeurIPS 2026Learning in Causal Markov Games
- NeurIPS 2026Learning in Context, Guided by Choice: A Reward-Free Paradigm for Reinforcement Learning with Transformers
- NeurIPS 2026Learning Large-Scale Competitive Team Behaviors with Mean-Field Interactions
- NeurIPS 2026Learning Multimodal One-step Flow Policy via Value-weighted Optimal Transport
- NeurIPS 2026Learning Neuronal Wiring Rules from Morphological Token Sequences
- NeurIPS 2026Learning Planning Budgets in Real-Time RL
- NeurIPS 2026Learning Process Rewards via Visitation Matching for Efficient RL
- NeurIPS 2026Learning Reusable Motor Motifs for Continuous Animal Behavior Modeling
- NeurIPS 2026Learning Robust Reasoning through Guided Adversarial Self-Play
- NeurIPS 2026Learning to Audit ML Models with Theory of Mind
Ask about this trend from Claude or Cursor
Connect the Paperlist MCP and your assistant can pull the numbers on this page while you draft a survey, pick a direction or plan a submission: papers per year and venue, growth, the fastest-rising sub-themes and representative papers, shaped around your question.
Copy this prompt into your assistant
Use paperlist to show how Reinforcement Learning papers grew at NeurIPS from 2023 to 2026, and which year jumped the most.
Tool the assistant calls: get_topic_stats {"topic": "reinforcement-learning"}
Set up Paperlist MCP in two minutes (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, ChatGPT)
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.