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

35 papers, page 1 of 1

1. ICML 2023A Fully First-Order Method for Stochastic Bilevel Optimization
2. ICML 2023A General Theory for Federated Optimization with Asynchronous and Heterogeneous Clients Updates
3. ICML 2023Accelerated Cyclic Coordinate Dual Averaging with Extrapolation for Composite Convex Optimization
4. ICML 2023Accelerated Stochastic Optimization Methods under Quasar-convexity
5. ICML 2023Algorithmic Collective Action in Machine Learning
6. ICML 2023Automatically Auditing Large Language Models via Discrete Optimization
7. ICML 2023Averaged Method of Multipliers for Bi-Level Optimization without Lower-Level Strong Convexity
8. ICML 2023Beyond Lipschitz Smoothness: A Tighter Analysis for Nonconvex Optimization
9. ICML 2023Beyond Uniform Lipschitz Condition in Differentially Private Optimization
10. ICML 2023Bit Allocation using Optimization
11. ICML 2023Certifying Ensembles: A General Certification Theory with S-Lipschitzness
12. ICML 2023Competitive Gradient Optimization
13. ICML 2023Convergence of First-Order Methods for Constrained Nonconvex Optimization with Dependent Data
14. ICML 2023Cyclic Block Coordinate Descent With Variance Reduction for Composite Nonconvex Optimization
15. ICML 2023DADAO: Decoupled Accelerated Decentralized Asynchronous Optimization
16. ICML 2023Differentially Private Stochastic Convex Optimization under a Quantile Loss Function
17. ICML 2023Escaping saddle points in zeroth-order optimization: the power of two-point estimators
18. ICML 2023Fast as CHITA: Neural Network Pruning with Combinatorial Optimization
19. ICML 2023Faster Gradient-Free Algorithms for Nonsmooth Nonconvex Stochastic Optimization
20. ICML 2023Faster Rates of Convergence to Stationary Points in Differentially Private Optimization
21. ICML 2023Generalized Polyak Step Size for First Order Optimization with Momentum
22. ICML 2023Global Optimization with Parametric Function Approximation
23. ICML 2023Linearly Constrained Bilevel Optimization: A Smoothed Implicit Gradient Approach
24. ICML 2023Lottery Tickets in Evolutionary Optimization: On Sparse Backpropagation-Free Trainability
25. ICML 2023Near-Optimal Algorithms for Private Online Optimization in the Realizable Regime
26. ICML 2023Nesterov Meets Optimism: Rate-Optimal Separable Minimax Optimization
27. ICML 2023Neural Network Accelerated Implicit Filtering: Integrating Neural Network Surrogates With Provably Convergent Derivative Free Optimization Methods
28. ICML 2023Omnipredictors for Constrained Optimization
29. ICML 2023Optimization for Amortized Inverse Problems
30. ICML 2023PASTA: Pessimistic Assortment Optimization
31. ICML 2023Robustly Learning a Single Neuron via Sharpness
32. ICML 2023Second-Order Optimization with Lazy Hessians
33. ICML 2023Single Point-Based Distributed Zeroth-Order Optimization with a Non-Convex Stochastic Objective Function
34. ICML 2023Tilted Sparse Additive Models
35. ICML 2023Transformer-based Stagewise Decomposition for Large-Scale Multistage Stochastic Optimization

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.