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

123 papers, page 3 of 3

101. NeurIPS 2023FedNAR: Federated Optimization with Normalized Annealing Regularization
102. NeurIPS 2023Finding Local Minima Efficiently in Decentralized Optimization
103. NeurIPS 2023First Order Stochastic Optimization with Oblivious Noise
104. NeurIPS 2023L2T-DLN: Learning to Teach with Dynamic Loss Network
105. NeurIPS 2023Learning Cuts via Enumeration Oracles
106. NeurIPS 2023Mechanic: A Learning Rate Tuner
107. NeurIPS 2023Memory-Constrained Algorithms for Convex Optimization
108. NeurIPS 2023Non-Smooth Weakly-Convex Finite-sum Coupled Compositional Optimization
109. NeurIPS 2023Optimal Exploration for Model-Based RL in Nonlinear Systems
110. NeurIPS 2023Optimal Time Complexities of Parallel Stochastic Optimization Methods Under a Fixed Computation Model
111. NeurIPS 2023Optimistic Natural Policy Gradient: a Simple Efficient Policy Optimization Framework for Online RL
112. NeurIPS 2023Outlier-Robust Wasserstein DRO
113. NeurIPS 2023Parallel Submodular Function Minimization
114. NeurIPS 2023PriorBand: Practical Hyperparameter Optimization in the Age of Deep Learning
115. NeurIPS 2023Projection-Free Online Convex Optimization via Efficient Newton Iterations
116. NeurIPS 2023Provable benefits of score matching
117. NeurIPS 2023Riemannian stochastic optimization methods avoid strict saddle points
118. NeurIPS 2023SLM: A Smoothed First-Order Lagrangian Method for Structured Constrained Nonconvex Optimization
119. NeurIPS 2023The Crucial Role of Normalization in Sharpness-Aware Minimization
120. NeurIPS 2023Training Your Image Restoration Network Better with Random Weight Network as Optimization Function
121. NeurIPS 2023Trajectory Alignment: Understanding the Edge of Stability Phenomenon via Bifurcation Theory
122. NeurIPS 2023What can a Single Attention Layer Learn? A Study Through the Random Features Lens
123. NeurIPS 2023When are ensembles really effective?

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.