ICLR 2026 — rules, template and writing practice
Scope: ICLR 2026 main conference. Checked: 19 September 2026. This submission cycle is complete; these are historical requirements, not instructions or deadlines for ICLR 2027 or workshops.
Explore all oral writing studies · Writing patterns and examples · Argument worksheet · Structure and visual design
Start from the official template
Section titled “Start from the official template”Use the conference-linked 2026 template, including its style and bibliography files. The archive linked by the Author Guide is convenient; the pinned source revision is useful for historical reproducibility.
Do not recreate the look by changing margins, font sizes or spacing. The template’s demonstration sections and notation tables are examples, not required scientific content. Its supplied seven-page example PDF does not define the allowed paper length.
The central phase distinction is 9 main-text pages initially; 10 for discussion/rebuttal and camera-ready. References and appendices have separate treatment. An accepted ten-page manuscript is not proof that ten pages were allowed in the initial submission. Official Author Guide, template §2.
Phase-aware requirements
Section titled “Phase-aware requirements”| Subject and stage | Rule / recommendation | Authority and source |
|---|---|---|
| Initial main textsubmission | 9 pagesAt most 9 pages. The explicit phase-specific rule and official template agree; later Author Guide boilerplate is inconsistent.required · conflicting wording: see cautions below | official policyICLR 2026 Author Guide · Official 2026 template source |
| Discussion / rebuttal main textdiscussion | 10 pagesAt most 10 pages.required | official policyICLR 2026 Author Guide · Official 2026 template source |
| Camera-ready main textcamera-ready | 10 pagesAt most 10 pages; do not infer initial-submission limits from accepted PDFs.required | official policyICLR 2026 Author Guide · Official 2026 template source |
| Referencessubmission · discussion · camera-ready | unlimitedOutside the main-text page limit.permitted | official policyICLR 2026 Author Guide |
| Appendicessubmission · discussion · camera-ready | unlimitedAfter references. Reviewers are not obliged to read them.permitted | official policyICLR 2026 Author Guide |
| Supplementary text and codesubmission | Combined text PDF is encouraged; a separate supplement is permitted. Code is encouraged, not universally required.recommended | official recommendationICLR 2026 Author Guide |
| Anonymous reviewsubmission · discussion | Anonymize the paper and supplements. Use third-person self-citations and do not reveal identity through artifacts.required | official policyICLR 2026 Author Guide |
| Ethics statementsubmission · discussion · camera-ready | optionalAt most one page before references, excluded from the main-text limit. Ethical compliance itself is required.permitted | official recommendationICLR 2026 Author Guide · ICLR Code of Ethics |
| Reproducibility statementsubmission · discussion · camera-ready | optionalA paragraph before references, excluded from the main-text limit; point to the evidence and artifacts.recommended | official recommendationICLR 2026 Author Guide |
| LLM-use disclosuresubmission · discussion · camera-ready | any useThe program-chair policy requires disclosure in the paper and submission form. For significant ideation/writing use, the Author Guide specifies a separate LLM-usage section, permitted in the appendix and outside the page limit. Humans remain responsible.conditional · conflicting wording: see cautions below | official policy2026 LLM-use policy · 2026 enforcement clarification · ICLR 2026 Author Guide · ICLR 2026 Reviewer Guide |
| Official formattingsubmission · discussion · camera-ready | iclr2026Use the unmodified official style and bibliography files; keep page numbers and readable visuals.required | template implementationOfficial 2026 template source · Official 2026 style implementation |
| Caption placementsubmission · discussion · camera-ready | figures below; tables aboveFigure captions below figures; table titles above tables. Number consistently and keep color figures interpretable in grayscale.required | template implementationOfficial 2026 template source |
| Final-copy modecamera-ready | iclrfinalcopyEnable for the accepted camera-ready version, not anonymous initial review. The switch exposes the author block and removes review line numbers.conditional | template implementationOfficial 2026 style implementation · Official 2026 template source |
| Scientific section ordersubmission · discussion · camera-ready | No mandatory research-paper heading sequence, abstract word count, figure count or standalone Limitations heading was located in the checked template.unspecified | official policyOfficial 2026 template source |
Conflicts and unknowns
Initial page count
The explicit Author Guide rule and template say 9 pages initially / 10 later; later Author Guide boilerplate calls 10 identical to the submission limit. Use the phase-specific distinction.
Title and author-order changes
Introductory rules and later FAQs differ. Author membership, ordering and title changes are separate issues; do not encode a permissive FAQ sentence as a universal rule.
Historical decision date
The Call for Papers says 25 January 2026; the Author Guide timeline says 22 January. Both are historical, not active deadlines.
AI disclosure threshold and placement
The program-chair policy says any use; the Author and Reviewer Guides discuss significant ideation/writing use. Follow the broader disclosure instruction. The Author Guide explicitly permits its separate LLM-usage section in the appendix and excludes it from the page limit.
2026 LLM-use policy · ICLR 2026 Author Guide · ICLR 2026 Reviewer Guide
Camera-ready upload cutoff
The checked guide refers to instructions sent by email. An exact operational cutoff was not verified here.
Official source register
Checked 2026-09-19. Shared policy pages can change; use the edition-specific author guide and the pinned template version when comparing historical requirements.
- ICLR 2026 Author Guide — Paper length; supplementary materials; anonymity; LLM use; camera-ready and FAQs
- ICLR 2026 Call for Papers — Key dates; submission process; subject areas
- ICLR 2026 Reviewer Guide — Reviewing a submission step-by-step; FAQ; LLM use
- Official 2026 template source — Abstract; Sections 1–4; final instructions; author contributions; acknowledgments; appendixInspected revision:
1955cdc44e140040826b585191458df14f1a3d5b - Official 2026 style implementation — Geometry; fonts; iclrfinalcopy; anonymity; review rulerInspected revision:
46ed6f4c6cef5b175dde23639e77d44c3463b230 - 2026 LLM-use policy — Policies 1–2; writing; research assistance; prompt injection
- 2026 enforcement clarification — LLM-generated papers; disclosure; fabricated content
- ICLR Code of Ethics — Scientific excellence; honesty; harm; attribution; privacy; confidentiality; remediation
What reviewers are asked to evaluate
Section titled “What reviewers are asked to evaluate”The official reviewer guidance emphasizes the problem, motivation, relationship to prior work, technical soundness, evidence, clarity, reproducibility and contribution. A meaningful empirical, theoretical or practical insight can matter without a new state-of-the-art score. These are assessment criteria, not a mandatory section outline. ICLR 2026 Reviewer Guide, review workflow and FAQ.
Translate those criteria into drafting questions:
- Can a reader identify what is actually new relative to the closest work?
- Are assumptions and definitions available before the argument relies on them?
- Does the evidence test the stated claim under a fair comparison contract?
- Are uncertainty, important failures and scope limitations visible?
- Can the reader find the details needed to check a theorem or reproduce a result?
The argument worksheet turns these questions into a claim ledger. The oral-paper studies provide concrete examples, including different contribution types. Neither is an official scoring formula.
Formatting conventions worth learning
Section titled “Formatting conventions worth learning”The official shell uses a single-paragraph abstract, author–year citations and an alphabetized bibliography. Keep figure captions below figures and table titles above tables. Number and refer to items consistently. Make visual labels legible and retain meaning without color. Use the supplied LaTeX style rather than manually matching dimensions. Official template, abstract and style/citation/figure sections.
There is no verified required number of contributions, ablations or figures in that template, nor a prescribed Introduction → Method → Experiments order. A good outline follows the scientific argument. A limitations discussion can be scientifically essential even when a particular standalone heading is not mandated.
Anonymity and artifact hygiene
Section titled “Anonymity and artifact hygiene”Check the manuscript and supplements, including URLs, metadata, filenames, acknowledgments and repository identity. Cite relevant self-work in the third person. An arXiv version is allowed, but that does not remove anonymous-review obligations. Follow the guide’s rules for code and demonstrations. Author Guide, anonymity and submission FAQs.
An editorial preflight should include opening anonymous artifacts while logged out, checking access permissions, searching for identifying text and examining the actual uploaded PDF. Do not collect reviewer identities through demonstration analytics. These checks help implement the policy; they are not a substitute for reading it.
Reproducibility, ethics and AI assistance
Section titled “Reproducibility, ethics and AI assistance”Make a reproducibility paragraph a map: point to proofs, preprocessing, split definitions, configurations, commands and artifacts. Explain restricted resources honestly. The statement is optional in the checked 2026 instructions; reproducibility and technical adequacy remain relevant to evaluation. Author Guide, recommended reproducibility statement.
An ethics paragraph cannot substitute for substantive attention to data provenance, privacy, consent, licensing, affected groups and potential harm. Human-subject or annotation work may require review; report the actual approval or exemption rather than inferring that public availability makes all uses acceptable. ICLR Code of Ethics.
The 2026 program-chair policy requires disclosure of LLM use in the paper and submission form. For significant ideation or writing assistance, the Author Guide specifies a separate LLM-usage section; it may appear in the appendix and is excluded from the page limit. The sources differ on the disclosure threshold, so preserve the broader any-use instruction rather than treating the significant-use wording as an exemption. Human authors remain accountable for invented citations, errors, plagiarism and misrepresented results. Keep a record of the assistance used and the checks humans performed. Author Guide, LLM use, August policy, November clarification.
Learn from the papers without copying them
Section titled “Learn from the papers without copying them”Inspect the complete oral corpus by paper, topic or writing technique. For each completed study, follow the original-paper link and the section/figure/table pinpoints. Ask what the chosen organization makes easy to verify—and what its limitations suggest you should do differently.
Do not copy wording, artwork, layouts or unsupported priority claims. Reuse an explanatory function: a problem-revealing example, a training/inference distinction, an assumption diagram, a controlled comparison or an appendix navigation map. The visual-design chapter explains how to create your own expression of those functions.
Before a future submission
Section titled “Before a future submission”Recheck the exact conference edition, track and phase. Read author eligibility, reciprocal-reviewing, dual-submission and revision rules directly; their exceptions are too important to infer from a previous year’s checklist. Confirm operational deadlines with official instructions. A writing guide can improve preparation, but cannot promise acceptance or certify that a study is correct.