ICML 2026 accepted papers by research area
6,341 papers were accepted at ICML 2026 (+2,999 vs 2025). Here is how they split across 20 research areas, and which topics gained the most ground.
See ICML 2026 in the interactive map
Research areas
| Area | Papers | Share | Change in share vs 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Large language models | 1,159 | 18.3% | +2.2 pts |
| Architectures and efficiency | 679 | 10.7% | +1.0 pts |
| Probabilistic and scientific modeling | 613 | 9.7% | -0.5 pts |
| Vision-language and multimodal | 549 | 8.7% | +3.3 pts |
| Reinforcement learning | 466 | 7.3% | +0.9 pts |
| Image generation | 429 | 6.8% | -0.3 pts |
| Learning theory and algorithms | 395 | 6.2% | -3.6 pts |
| Multi-agent systems and games | 363 | 5.7% | +2.8 pts |
| Label-efficient and robust learning | 352 | 5.6% | -1.2 pts |
| Graph learning | 206 | 3.2% | -2.0 pts |
| Optimization | 184 | 2.9% | -0.9 pts |
| Video | 178 | 2.8% | +1.4 pts |
| Time series | 138 | 2.2% | +0.1 pts |
| Federated learning and privacy | 130 | 2.1% | -1.1 pts |
| Adversarial robustness and security | 116 | 1.8% | -0.8 pts |
| 3D vision | 113 | 1.8% | +0.6 pts |
| Continual learning | 98 | 1.5% | steady |
| Bandits and online learning | 88 | 1.4% | -1.5 pts |
| Detection and segmentation | 56 | 0.9% | -0.1 pts |
| Point clouds | 29 | 0.5% | -0.1 pts |
Fastest-growing topics at ICML 2026
Change in share of ICML papers from 2025 to 2026, topics with at least 10 papers.
- LLM agents (Multi-agent systems and games): 40 → 281 papers
- Reasoning and chain of thought (Large language models): 77 → 306 papers
- Multimodal LLMs (Vision-language and multimodal): 57 → 266 papers
- RL from feedback (Reinforcement learning): 33 → 168 papers
- Agents, code and math (Large language models): 89 → 237 papers
- Robot action and navigation (Vision-language and multimodal): 10 → 71 papers
- Video generation (Video): 23 → 89 papers
- Cross-modal learning (Vision-language and multimodal): 26 → 91 papers
- Attention and transformers (Architectures and efficiency): 95 → 215 papers
- RNNs and normalization (Architectures and efficiency): 97 → 217 papers
More venues
Same year: NeurIPS 2026 · ICLR 2026 · CVPR 2026 · AAAI 2026