ICML 2026: 43rd International Conference on Machine Learning

Tutorial and main conference in-person registrations for ICML 2026 are sold out. Workshop registrations are still open and authors of accepted posters can still register through the process described on the Poster Instructions page. The organizing team set a registration cap marginally below the legal limit for the COEX venue, a decision confirmed by Kamalika Chaudhuri, President of the ICML Board: 'Setting a registration cap is not a decision we take lightly, but it reflects our commitment to making sure that when you come to Seoul, you can actually do the things you came to do: hear the talks, have the conversations, and engage with the work.' The full registration update is on the ICML blog.

ICML 2026 has confirmed six invited speakers whose work spans machine learning theory, AI safety and ethics, economics and policy, computational biology, natural language processing and human-computer interaction. The lineup was announced on the official ICML blog on May 18, 2026.

The ICML 2026 Policy for LLM use in Reviewing has been published at icml.cc/Conferences/2026/LLM-Policy. The policy follows an experimental programme using Google's Paper Assistant Tool (PAT) for ICML 2026 and a retrospective on that programme published on the ICML blog. Violations of the LLM review policy were also addressed in a March 2026 blog post. See also the Peer Review FAQ.

A new self-ranking policy for reviews was introduced for ICML 2026. Authors with multiple submissions are asked on a voluntary basis to provide a self-assessment of the quality of their own submissions via partial ranking. Disagreements between their own rankings and reviewer scores are used to flag papers that may require more attention and as a factor guiding the assignment of emergency reviewers.

The organizing team has confirmed that wireless connectivity at the COEX venue has real limitations, particularly in the plenary hall during crowded sessions. Keynotes will be streamed into multiple rooms to distribute attendance. The ICML mobile app stores the schedule locally and does not require a connection to function. Attendees are encouraged to download the app before travelling and to print or save their schedule locally.

The Future Meetings page has been updated with confirmed locations for ICML 2027 and ICML 2028, continuing the conference's long-term planning cycle.

ICML's traditional strength in statistical learning theory, optimization theory and mathematical foundations of ML runs through the main conference. Sessions address generalization, sample complexity, convergence analysis and the theoretical underpinnings of modern deep learning, including work on feature learning, memorization and emergence in large models. Sham Kakade's invited talk draws directly from this tradition, with his research spanning scalable training methods for large language models, tensor methods for latent variable estimation and foundational theory for deep learning.

Large language models and foundation models continue to dominate submissions to ICML, covering training methods, evaluation frameworks, alignment, safety and efficiency. The Lay Summaries programme introduced for ICML 2026 is designed to make accepted papers accessible to a broader audience, reflecting the growing public interest in foundation model research. Verena Rieser's invited talk on responsible development and alignment of frontier AI models speaks directly to this track.

Reinforcement learning and sequential decision making are a core ICML track, covering theoretical foundations, sample efficiency, offline RL, multi-agent systems and RL applied to language models and robotic control. Sham Kakade's foundational work in RL theory, including establishing statistical foundations of reinforcement learning and provably efficient policy search methods, provides the mathematical backbone for much current work in this area.

The ethics, safety and societal impact track reflects ICML's expanded commitment to responsible research. Arvind Narayanan's invited talk on the societal impact of digital technologies, drawing from his book AI Snake Oil and newsletter, addresses the science of AI agent evaluation, the impact of AI on institutions and professions, and algorithmic amplification on social media. Pascale Fung's work on ethical AI and affective computing, including her roles with the UN Advisory Body on AI Governance and the World Economic Forum, anchors the policy dimension.

AI for science and computational biology is a growing track at ICML, addressing how machine learning methods are being applied to drug discovery, genomics, protein structure prediction and clinical decision making. Aviv Regev's invited talk draws from her leadership at Genentech, where she oversees the integration of AI and ML into drug discovery in a Lab in the Loop framework, with her own research pioneering experimental methods and computational algorithms to decipher cellular circuits in health and disease.

The intersection of machine learning and economics, policy and social systems is represented through Susan Athey's invited talk, drawing from her research on the economics of digitization, causal inference and AI, online advertising, news media, labour market transitions and digital technology for social impact. This track is becoming increasingly central to ICML as ML systems are deployed at scale across economic and social institutions.

July 6 combines an Expo with tutorial sessions. Tutorials were announced on April 2, 2026, via the official ICML blog. The Expo provides exhibitors and sponsors with direct access to the ICML community. Expo Presentations have their own call and are listed at icml.cc/Expo/applications.

The main conference runs July 7, 8 and 9 at COEX, covering oral presentations, poster sessions, all six invited talks, the Test of Time Award lecture, socials, mentoring sessions and industry events. The Scholar Inbox conference planner provides a personal agenda and paper recommendation system. All accepted papers are listed at icml.cc/virtual/2026/papers.html.

Workshops run July 10 and 11 and are co-located events with their own programmes, accepted papers and participants. The workshop list was announced on April 6, 2026, via the official ICML blog and includes both standard workshops and affinity workshops. The full workshop listing is at icml.cc/virtual/2026/events/workshop. Workshop registrations are not yet at capacity and remain open. Authors of accepted workshop papers may also register through the standard process.

Virtual registration provides access to all sessions and is not subject to the in-person capacity cap. It is required for at least one author of accepted papers who are not attending in person. The ICML mobile app is available on iOS and Android and stores the schedule locally without requiring a live internet connection.

ICML acceptance is among the strongest forms of peer-reviewed validation in the ML research community, with acceptance rates typically between 21% and 30% of submissions that now regularly exceed 10,000. The invited talks programme gives researchers direct access to six leaders whose work spans ML theory, applied biology, economics, AI safety and policy, offering perspectives beyond the core ML community.

The papers accepted to ICML 2026 represent the research that will shape production ML systems over the next one to three years. Engineering teams tracking the state of the art in optimization, large language models, reinforcement learning and efficient inference will find direct technical reference in the proceedings, published open-access in PMLR at proceedings.mlr.press.

ICML proceedings are one of the most important technical signals available on where machine learning is heading. The invited talk by Arvind Narayanan on AI Snake Oil and the societal impact of AI systems, and Susan Athey's work on the economics of AI and digital technology, give business leaders a direct view of the policy and economic dynamics shaping AI deployment at scale.

ICML is a primary recruiting venue for ML talent, with Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Apple and financial firms including Citadel Securities and Jane Street Capital maintaining a regular presence through sponsorship, papers and booth activities. The ICML Career Site is open during the conference week connecting candidates with sponsor organisations.