Theory · optimization papers, 2023–2026
Theory area: optimization
Scope: NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML and CVPR, 2023–2026. 1,871 papers are tagged with this topic.
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.
Papers per venue
Counts by year and venue
| Year | NeurIPS | ICLR | ICML | CVPR | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 37 | 46 | 35 | 5 | 123 |
| 2024 | 304 | 123 | 67 | 0 | 494 |
| 2025 | 318 | 196 | 147 | 9 | 670 |
| 2026 | 119 | 244 | 214 | 7 | 584 |
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
214 papers, page 5 of 5
- ICML 2026Towards Understanding Adam Convergence on Highly Degenerate Polynomials
- ICML 2026Towards Understanding Generalization of Federated Adversarial Learning: Perspective of Algorithmic Stability
- ICML 2026Trainable Nonexpansive Denoisers for Contractive Image Reconstruction
- ICML 2026Transformers Learn the Optimal DDPM Denoiser for Multi-Token GMMs
- ICML 2026TSP with Predictions: Heatmap to Tour with Provable Guarantees
- ICML 2026Understanding MARS: When Scaling Momentum Provably Helps
- ICML 2026Understanding SAM through Minimax Perspective
- ICML 2026Universal Learning of Nonlinear Dynamics
- ICML 2026Universal Representation of Generalized Convex Functions and their Gradients
- ICML 2026Upper-Linearizability of Online Non-Monotone DR-Submodular Maximization over Down-Closed Convex Sets
- ICML 2026Variance-Reduced $(\varepsilon, \delta)-$Unlearning using Forget Set Gradients
- ICML 2026What Does Preference Learning Recover from Pairwise Comparison Data?
- ICML 2026What Does Thompson Sampling Optimize?
- ICML 2026Why Do We Need Warm-up? A Theoretical Perspective
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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.