Theory · learning theory papers, 2023–2026

Key findings

• Theory · learning theory went from 86 papers in 2023 to 482 in 2026, roughly 5.6x in three years.
• NeurIPS publishes the most Theory · learning theory work: 540 papers from 2023 to 2026, 40% of the four-venue total.
• The fastest-growing overlap is with Social aspects · accountability transparency and interpretability: papers tagged with both rose from 0 in 2023 to 33 in 2026.
• Among the 5 topics under Theory and Statistics, it ranks #2 by 2026 paper count; the fastest grower in the group, Theory · optimization, is up 4.7x versus 5.6x here.

Representative papers

Spread across years and venues so every edition shows up

• NeurIPS 2026A dynamical systems theory of reward-modulated learning in linear recurrent networks
• ICML 2026A Fine-Grained Understanding of Uniform Convergence for Halfspaces
• ICLR 2026A Law of Data Reconstruction for Random Features (And Beyond)
• NeurIPS 2025A Geometric Analysis of PCA
• ICML 2025A Generalization Theory for Zero-Shot Prediction
• ICLR 2025A Solvable Attention for Neural Scaling Laws
• CVPR 2025Dynamic Stereotype Theory Induced Micro-expression Recognition with Oriented Deformation
• NeurIPS 20244+3 Phases of Compute-Optimal Neural Scaling Laws
• ICML 2024A Statistical Theory of Regularization-Based Continual Learning
• ICLR 2024A Sublinear Adversarial Training Algorithm
• CVPR 2024Accurate Training Data for Occupancy Map Prediction in Automated Driving Using Evidence Theory
• NeurIPS 2023$\varepsilon$-fractional core stability in Hedonic Games.
• ICML 2023Robust Collaborative Learning with Linear Gradient Overhead
• ICLR 2023Bispectral Neural Networks
• NeurIPS 2026A Mechanistic Investigation of Theory of Mind in a Large Language Model
• ICML 2026A Random Matrix Theory of Masked Self-Supervised Learning
• ICLR 2026A New Approach to Controlling Linear Dynamical Systems
• NeurIPS 2025Approximation theory for 1-Lipschitz ResNets
• ICML 2025A Two-Stage Learning-to-Defer Approach for Multi-Task Learning
• ICLR 2025A Theoretical Analysis of Self-Supervised Learning for Vision Transformers

All Theory · learning theory papers

86 papers, page 1 of 2

1. ICLR 2023A Theory of Dynamic Benchmarks
2. ICLR 2023Achieving Sub-linear Regret in Infinite Horizon Average Reward Constrained MDP with Linear Function Approximation
3. ICLR 2023Bispectral Neural Networks
4. ICLR 2023Computational Language Acquisition with Theory of Mind
5. ICLR 2023D4FT: A Deep Learning Approach to Kohn-Sham Density Functional Theory
6. ICLR 2023Disentanglement with Biological Constraints: A Theory of Functional Cell Types
7. ICLR 2023Humanly Certifying Superhuman Classifiers
8. ICLR 2023Learning in temporally structured environments
9. ICLR 2023Learning Probabilistic Topological Representations Using Discrete Morse Theory
10. ICLR 2023Learning ReLU networks to high uniform accuracy is intractable
11. ICLR 2023Long-Tailed Learning Requires Feature Learning
12. ICLR 2023Max-Margin Works while Large Margin Fails: Generalization without Uniform Convergence
13. ICLR 2023Pitfalls of Gaussians as a noise distribution in NCE
14. ICLR 2023Plateau in Monotonic Linear Interpolation --- A "Biased" View of Loss Landscape for Deep Networks
15. ICLR 2023Provable Memorization Capacity of Transformers
16. ICLR 2023Sharper Bounds for Uniformly Stable Algorithms with Stationary Mixing Process
17. ICLR 2023Spacetime Representation Learning
18. ICLR 2023Statistical Theory of Differentially Private Marginal-based Data Synthesis Algorithms
19. ICLR 2023Strong inductive biases provably prevent harmless interpolation
20. ICLR 2023Systematic Rectification of Language Models via Dead-end Analysis
21. ICLR 2023The Influence of Learning Rule on Representation Dynamics in Wide Neural Networks
22. ICLR 2023Towards Minimax Optimal Reward-free Reinforcement Learning in Linear MDPs
23. ICLR 2023Transformers Learn Shortcuts to Automata
24. ICLR 2023Why adversarial training can hurt robust accuracy
25. ICML 2023Certifying Ensembles: A General Certification Theory with S-Lipschitzness
26. ICML 2023Fast Federated Machine Unlearning with Nonlinear Functional Theory
27. ICML 2023Regularization and Variance-Weighted Regression Achieves Minimax Optimality in Linear MDPs: Theory and Practice
28. ICML 2023Robust Collaborative Learning with Linear Gradient Overhead
29. ICML 2023Shortest Edit Path Crossover: A Theory-driven Solution to the Permutation Problem in Evolutionary Neural Architecture Search
30. NeurIPS 2023$\varepsilon$-fractional core stability in Hedonic Games.
31. NeurIPS 2023A Measure-Theoretic Axiomatisation of Causality
32. NeurIPS 2023A Theory of Multimodal Learning
33. NeurIPS 2023A Theory of Unsupervised Translation Motivated by Understanding Animal Communication
34. NeurIPS 2023Accelerating Value Iteration with Anchoring
35. NeurIPS 2023Agnostic Multi-Group Active Learning
36. NeurIPS 2023Alternation makes the adversary weaker in two-player games
37. NeurIPS 2023Bandit Social Learning under Myopic Behavior
38. NeurIPS 2023Bayesian Learning of Optimal Policies in Markov Decision Processes with Countably Infinite State-Space
39. NeurIPS 2023Bridging RL Theory and Practice with the Effective Horizon
40. NeurIPS 2023Characterization of Overfitting in Robust Multiclass Classification
41. NeurIPS 2023Common Ground in Cooperative Communication
42. NeurIPS 2023Delegated Classification
43. NeurIPS 2023Eliciting User Preferences for Personalized Multi-Objective Decision Making through Comparative Feedback
44. NeurIPS 2023Equivariant Neural Operator Learning with Graphon Convolution
45. NeurIPS 2023Estimating the Rate-Distortion Function by Wasserstein Gradient Descent
46. NeurIPS 2023Faster Relative Entropy Coding with Greedy Rejection Coding
47. NeurIPS 2023Feature Selection in the Contrastive Analysis Setting
48. NeurIPS 2023Finding Safe Zones of Markov Decision Processes Policies
49. NeurIPS 2023Generalized Belief Transport
50. NeurIPS 2023Information Theoretic Lower Bounds for Information Theoretic Upper Bounds

FAQ

How many Theory · learning theory papers were published at NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML and CVPR from 2023 to 2026?

1,350 in total: 86 in 2023, 393 in 2024, 389 in 2025, 482 in 2026.

How many Theory · learning theory papers are at NeurIPS 2026?

NeurIPS 2026 has 112 Theory · learning theory papers, versus 106 the year before.

How many Theory · learning theory papers are at ICLR 2026?

ICLR 2026 has 200 Theory · learning theory papers, versus 147 the year before.

How many Theory · learning theory papers are at ICML 2026?

ICML 2026 has 170 Theory · learning theory papers, versus 132 the year before.

How many Theory · learning theory papers are at CVPR 2025?

CVPR 2025 has 4 Theory · learning theory papers, versus 1 the year before.

Which conference publishes the most Theory · learning theory papers?

NeurIPS, with 540 papers from 2023 to 2026.