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

244 papers, page 1 of 5

1. ICLR 2026A Block Coordinate Descent Method for Nonsmooth Composite Optimization under Orthogonality Constraints
2. ICLR 2026A Convergence Analysis of Adaptive Optimizers under Floating-point Quantization
3. ICLR 2026A Memory-Efficient Hierarchical Algorithm for Large-scale Optimal Transport Problems
4. ICLR 2026A New Approach to Controlling Linear Dynamical Systems
5. ICLR 2026A Physics-Inspired Optimizer: Velocity Regularized Adam
6. ICLR 2026A Recovery Guarantee for Sparse Neural Networks
7. ICLR 2026A Scalable Constant-Factor Approximation Algorithm for $W_p$ Optimal Transport
8. ICLR 2026A Statistical Theory of Overfitting for Imbalanced Classification
9. ICLR 2026A Tale of Two Smoothness Notions: Adaptive Optimizers and Non-Euclidean Descent
10. ICLR 2026Achieving Approximate Symmetry Is Exponentially Easier than Exact Symmetry
11. ICLR 2026Adaptive Acquisition Selection for Bayesian Optimization with Large Language Models
12. ICLR 2026Adaptive gradient descent on Riemannian manifolds and its applications to Gaussian variational inference
13. ICLR 2026Adaptive Methods Are Preferable in High Privacy Settings: An SDE Perspective
14. ICLR 2026Adaptive Nonlinear Compression for Large Foundation Models
15. ICLR 2026Adaptive Regularization for Large-Scale Sparse Feature Embedding Models
16. ICLR 2026Align-SAM: Seeking Flatter Minima for Better Cross-Subset Alignment
17. ICLR 2026Almost Bayesian: Dynamics of SGD Through Singular Learning Theory
18. ICLR 2026An Agentic Framework with LLMs for Solving Complex Vehicle Routing Problems
19. ICLR 2026An Information-Theoretical Framework For Optimizing Experimental Design To Distinguish Probabilistic Neural Codes
20. ICLR 2026Arbitrary-Order Block SignSGD for Memory-Efficient LLM Fine-Tuning
21. ICLR 2026Asynchronous Matching with Dynamic Sampling for Multimodal Dataset Distillation
22. ICLR 2026AutoEP: LLMs-Driven Automation of Hyperparameter Evolution for Metaheuristic Algorithms
23. ICLR 2026Beyond Match Maximization and Fairness: Retention-Optimized Two-Sided Matching
24. ICLR 2026Beyond Sequential Reranking: Reranker-Guided Search Improves Reasoning Intensive Retrieval
25. ICLR 2026Beyond Short Steps in Frank-Wolfe Algorithms
26. ICLR 2026Bi-LoRA: Efficient Sharpness-Aware Minimization for Fine-Tuning Large-Scale Models
27. ICLR 2026Bilevel Optimization with Lower-Level Uniform Convexity: Theory and Algorithm
28. ICLR 2026Birch SGD: A Tree Graph Framework for Local and Asynchronous SGD Methods
29. ICLR 2026Block-Sample MAC-Bayes Generalization Bounds
30. ICLR 2026BoGrape: Bayesian optimization over graphs with shortest-path encoded
31. ICLR 2026BoRA: Towards More Expressive Low-Rank Adaptation with Block Diversity
32. ICLR 2026Byzantine-Robust Federated Learning with Learnable Aggregation Weights
33. ICLR 2026CALM: Co-evolution of Algorithms and Language Model for Automatic Heuristic Design
34. ICLR 2026Cautious Weight Decay
35. ICLR 2026Chain-of-Context Learning: Dynamic Constraint Understanding for Multi-Task VRPs
36. ICLR 2026Characterizing the Discrete Geometry of ReLU Networks
37. ICLR 2026Clipped Gradient Methods for Nonsmooth Convex Optimization under Heavy-Tailed Noise: A Refined Analysis
38. ICLR 2026Communication-Efficient Decentralized Optimization via Double-Communication Symmetric ADMM
39. ICLR 2026Composite Optimization with Error Feedback: the Dual Averaging Approach
40. ICLR 2026Consistent Low-Rank Approximation
41. ICLR 2026Constraint Matters: Multi-Modal Representation for Reducing Mixed-Integer Linear programming
42. ICLR 2026Contextual Causal Bayesian Optimisation
43. ICLR 2026Converge Faster, Talk Less: Hessian-Informed Federated Zeroth-Order Optimization
44. ICLR 2026Convergence Dynamics of Over-Parameterized Score Matching for a Single Gaussian
45. ICLR 2026Convergence of Muon with Newton-Schulz
46. ICLR 2026Convergence of Regret Matching in Potential Games and Constrained Optimization
47. ICLR 2026Corner Gradient Descent
48. ICLR 2026COSMOS: A Hybrid Adaptive Optimizer for Efficient Training of Large Language Models
49. ICLR 2026Cut Less, Fold More: Model Compression through the Lens of Projection Geometry
50. ICLR 2026DADA: Dual Averaging with Distance Adaptation

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.