Theory · optimization papers, 2023–2026

Key findings

• Theory · optimization went from 123 papers in 2023 to 584 in 2026, roughly 4.7x in three years.
• NeurIPS publishes the most Theory · optimization work: 778 papers from 2023 to 2026, 42% of the four-venue total.
• The fastest-growing overlap is with Low-Rank Adaptation: papers tagged with both rose from 0 in 2023 to 31 in 2026.
• Among the 5 topics under Theory and Statistics, it ranks #1 by 2026 paper count; the fastest grower in the group, Theory · learning theory, is up 5.6x versus 4.7x here.

Representative papers

Spread across years and venues so every edition shows up

• NeurIPS 2026A Mechanistic Investigation of Theory of Mind in a Large Language Model
• ICML 2026A Direct Second-Order Method for Solving Two-Player Zero-Sum Games
• ICLR 2026A Convergence Analysis of Adaptive Optimizers under Floating-point Quantization
• CVPR 2026TriSim Tri-Dimensional Similarity Modeling with Extreme Value Theory for False-Negative
• NeurIPS 20253BASiL: An Algorithmic Framework for Sparse plus Low-Rank Compression of LLMs
• ICML 2025Active Learning of Deep Neural Networks via Gradient-Free Cutting Planes
• ICLR 2025A Coefficient Makes SVRG Effective
• CVPR 2025Dynamic Stereotype Theory Induced Micro-expression Recognition with Oriented Deformation
• NeurIPS 2024A Combinatorial Algorithm for the Semi-Discrete Optimal Transport Problem
• ICML 2024A Statistical Theory of Regularization-Based Continual Learning
• ICLR 2024A Discretization Framework for Robust Contextual Stochastic Optimization
• NeurIPS 2023[Re] Bandit Theory and Thompson Sampling-guided Directed Evolution for Sequence Optimization
• ICML 2023Averaged Method of Multipliers for Bi-Level Optimization without Lower-Level Strong Convexity
• ICLR 2023Adaptive Optimization in the $\infty$-Width Limit
• CVPR 2023Deep Hashing With Minimal-Distance-Separated Hash Centers
• NeurIPS 2026Avoiding Obfuscation with Prover-Estimator Debate
• ICML 2026A General Framework for Dynamic Consistent Submodular Maximization
• ICLR 2026A Memory-Efficient Hierarchical Algorithm for Large-scale Optimal Transport Problems
• CVPR 2026FedAdamom Adaptive Momentum for Improved Generalization in Federated Optimization
• NeurIPS 2025A Beyond-Worst-Case Analysis of Greedy k-means++

All Theory · optimization papers

584 papers, page 12 of 12

551. NeurIPS 2026Phase Transitions in Attention: A Bayesian Theory of Copy Head Emergence
552. NeurIPS 2026Playing Markov Games Without Observing Payoffs
553. NeurIPS 2026Policy Optimization in Tabular MDPs: Data-dependent Regret under Unknown Transitions
554. NeurIPS 2026Polynomial-Time Algorithm for Thiele Voting Rules with Voter Interval Preferences
555. NeurIPS 2026Prediction Under Imperfect Compression: A Theory of Approximate MDL
556. NeurIPS 2026Quantum Speedups for Stochastic Optimization with Heavy-Tailed Noise
557. NeurIPS 2026Random Matrix Theory of Early-Stopped Gradient Flow: A Transient BBP Scenario
558. NeurIPS 2026Randomized Kriging Believer For Parallel Bayesian Optimization With Regret Bounds
559. NeurIPS 2026Replicable Constrained Bandits
560. NeurIPS 2026Rethinking Gradient Approximation in Quantization: A Zeroth-Order Expectation Perspective
561. NeurIPS 2026Riemannian Bilevel Optimization under the Polyak–Łojasiewicz Condition
562. NeurIPS 2026Robust Statistical Estimators with Bounded Empirical Sensitivity
563. NeurIPS 2026Sample complexity of stochastic optimization with integer variables
564. NeurIPS 2026Second-Order Complexity Theory for Neural Networks
565. NeurIPS 2026Select-then-differentiate: Solving Bilevel Optimization with Manifold Lower-level Solution Sets
566. NeurIPS 2026Sharp Non-Asymptotic Analysis of the Penalized Challenger in $\beta$-EB-TCI for Bernoulli Bandits
567. NeurIPS 2026Sign-Based Optimizers Are Effective Under Heavy-Tailed Noise
568. NeurIPS 2026Skip the Hessian, Keep the Rates: Globalized Semismooth Newton with Lazy Hessian Updates
569. NeurIPS 2026Stochastic Zeroth-Order Optimization Under Heavy-Tailed Noise
570. NeurIPS 2026Structure vs. Chaos: Asymmetric Entropic Optimization for Enforcing Instruction Hierarchy
571. NeurIPS 2026Subcritical Signal Propagation at Initialization in Normalization-Free Transformers
572. NeurIPS 2026Taming the Tails: Why Distributionally Robust Optimization Needs New Theory for Imbalanced Regression
573. NeurIPS 2026The Optimization Prior: Instilling depth for shallow networks, detail for coarse networks
574. NeurIPS 2026The Symmetries of Three-Layer ReLU Networks
575. NeurIPS 2026Theory on Attention Dynamics for Out-of-Distribution In-Context Learning
576. NeurIPS 2026Tight Generalization Bounds for Noiseless Inverse Optimization
577. NeurIPS 2026Toward a theory of Evaluability
578. NeurIPS 2026Towards Settling the Complexity of Non-Euclidean Parallel Convex Optimization
579. NeurIPS 2026Training-free Spatially Grounded Geometric Shape Encoding
580. NeurIPS 2026Training-Induced Escape from Token Clustering in a Mean-Field Formulation of Transformers
581. NeurIPS 2026Truncated Riemannian (1+1)-ES for Black-Box Optimization with Intrinsic Dimension Guarantees
582. NeurIPS 2026Value-Priced Uncertainty: A Family of PPO-Compatible Exploration Bonuses
583. NeurIPS 2026VSPO: Vector-Steered Policy Optimization for Controllable Model Behavior
584. NeurIPS 2026When Symbol Names Should Not Matter: A Logistic Theory of Fresh-Symbol Classification

FAQ

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

1,871 in total: 123 in 2023, 494 in 2024, 670 in 2025, 584 in 2026.

How many Theory · optimization papers are at NeurIPS 2026?

NeurIPS 2026 has 119 Theory · optimization papers, versus 318 the year before.

How many Theory · optimization papers are at ICLR 2026?

ICLR 2026 has 244 Theory · optimization papers, versus 196 the year before.

How many Theory · optimization papers are at ICML 2026?

ICML 2026 has 214 Theory · optimization papers, versus 147 the year before.

How many Theory · optimization papers are at CVPR 2026?

CVPR 2026 has 7 Theory · optimization papers, versus 9 the year before.

Which conference publishes the most Theory · optimization papers?

NeurIPS, with 778 papers from 2023 to 2026.