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

37 papers, page 1 of 1

1. NeurIPS 2023[Re] Bandit Theory and Thompson Sampling-guided Directed Evolution for Sequence Optimization
2. NeurIPS 2023A Theoretical Analysis of Optimistic Proximal Policy Optimization in Linear Markov Decision Processes
3. NeurIPS 2023A Unified Discretization Framework for Differential Equation Approach with Lyapunov Arguments for Convex Optimization
4. NeurIPS 2023Accelerated Quasi-Newton Proximal Extragradient: Faster Rate for Smooth Convex Optimization
5. NeurIPS 2023Accelerated Zeroth-order Method for Non-Smooth Stochastic Convex Optimization Problem with Infinite Variance
6. NeurIPS 2023Achieving $\mathcal{O}(\epsilon^{-1.5})$ Complexity in Hessian/Jacobian-free Stochastic Bilevel Optimization
7. NeurIPS 2023Advancing Bayesian Optimization via Learning Correlated Latent Space
8. NeurIPS 2023An Optimal Structured Zeroth-order Algorithm for Non-smooth Optimization
9. NeurIPS 2023Bilevel Optimization with a Lower-level Contraction: Optimal Sample Complexity without Warm-Start
10. NeurIPS 2023Complexity of Derivative-Free Policy Optimization for Structured $\mathcal{H}_\infty$ Control
11. NeurIPS 2023DRAUC: An Instance-wise Distributionally Robust AUC Optimization Framework
12. NeurIPS 2023Estimating the Rate-Distortion Function by Wasserstein Gradient Descent
13. NeurIPS 2023Fast Partitioned Learned Bloom Filter
14. NeurIPS 2023Faster Margin Maximization Rates for Generic Optimization Methods
15. NeurIPS 2023FedNAR: Federated Optimization with Normalized Annealing Regularization
16. NeurIPS 2023Finding Local Minima Efficiently in Decentralized Optimization
17. NeurIPS 2023First Order Stochastic Optimization with Oblivious Noise
18. NeurIPS 2023L2T-DLN: Learning to Teach with Dynamic Loss Network
19. NeurIPS 2023Learning Cuts via Enumeration Oracles
20. NeurIPS 2023Mechanic: A Learning Rate Tuner
21. NeurIPS 2023Memory-Constrained Algorithms for Convex Optimization
22. NeurIPS 2023Non-Smooth Weakly-Convex Finite-sum Coupled Compositional Optimization
23. NeurIPS 2023Optimal Exploration for Model-Based RL in Nonlinear Systems
24. NeurIPS 2023Optimal Time Complexities of Parallel Stochastic Optimization Methods Under a Fixed Computation Model
25. NeurIPS 2023Optimistic Natural Policy Gradient: a Simple Efficient Policy Optimization Framework for Online RL
26. NeurIPS 2023Outlier-Robust Wasserstein DRO
27. NeurIPS 2023Parallel Submodular Function Minimization
28. NeurIPS 2023PriorBand: Practical Hyperparameter Optimization in the Age of Deep Learning
29. NeurIPS 2023Projection-Free Online Convex Optimization via Efficient Newton Iterations
30. NeurIPS 2023Provable benefits of score matching
31. NeurIPS 2023Riemannian stochastic optimization methods avoid strict saddle points
32. NeurIPS 2023SLM: A Smoothed First-Order Lagrangian Method for Structured Constrained Nonconvex Optimization
33. NeurIPS 2023The Crucial Role of Normalization in Sharpness-Aware Minimization
34. NeurIPS 2023Training Your Image Restoration Network Better with Random Weight Network as Optimization Function
35. NeurIPS 2023Trajectory Alignment: Understanding the Edge of Stability Phenomenon via Bifurcation Theory
36. NeurIPS 2023What can a Single Attention Layer Learn? A Study Through the Random Features Lens
37. 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.