RLC/RLJ 2026 Call For Papers

The third Reinforcement Learning Conference (RLC) will be held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, from August 15 to 18, 2026.

RLC provides a venue where reinforcement learning researchers can interact and share their research in a more focused setting than typical large machine learning venues. The Reinforcement Learning Journal (RLJ) is an annual peer-reviewed publication focusing on reinforcement learning. RLJ is complemented by RLC, an associated event where researchers can present and elaborate on their findings published in RLJ.

Topics of Interest

We invite submissions presenting new and original research of interest to the reinforcement learning community, including but not limited to:

• RL algorithms: new algorithms for existing settings and new settings
• Hierarchical RL: skill discovery, hierarchical representations and abstractions
• Exploration: intrinsic motivation, curiosity-driven learning, exploration-exploitation tradeoff
• Theoretical RL: complexity results, convergence analysis
• Social and economic aspects: safety, fairness, interpretability, privacy, trustworthiness, human-AI interaction
• Bandit algorithms: theoretical contributions, practical algorithms
• Planning algorithms: decision-making under uncertainty, model-based approaches
• Foundations: showing relationships between methods, unifying theory, clarifying misconceptions
• Evaluation: methodology, meta-studies, replicability, and validity
• Benchmarks: specific RL challenges, real-world applications
• Applied RL: medical, operations, traffic
• Deep RL: analysis of the interplay between RL and deep learning models
• Multi-agent RL: cooperative, competitive, self-play
• RL from human feedback: reward learning from human data, human-in-the-loop learning
• Imitation Learning: learning from demonstrations, apprenticeship learning, inverse RL
• Neuroscience and cognitive science targeting a computational RL audience

Interdisciplinary Research

We also welcome interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary research that does not neatly fit into existing categories but which has an RL audience.

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Dates and Deadlines

• Feb 17: Submission site will open by this date
• March 1 AOE (Anywhere on Earth): Abstract submission deadline
• March 5 AOE: Submission deadline
• March 6 – March 12 AOE: Paper bidding
• March 13: Finalize paper assignment
• March 13 – March 27 AOE: Review
• March 28 – April 10 AOE: Review adjustment phase (AC/Reviewer interaction)
• April 11 – April 17 AOE: Author response phase
• April 18 – April 24 AOE: Discussion and meta-review
• April 25 – May 8 AOE: Decision notification
• July 18 AOE: Camera-ready paper due
• Aug 15 - Aug 18: Conference

Formatting Instructions

All submissions should be in PDF format. Main text strict limit: 12 pages (recommended 8 pages). Appendices before references count towards limit. Use the provided style files.

Policies

• Attendance: One author must register and attend to present the paper.
• LLMs: Allowed for writing assistance, but authors are fully responsible for correctness and originality.
• Dual Submissions: Not allowed (parallel submissions to other conferences/journals). Dual submission with RLDM is allowed.
• Publication: Accepted papers will be published in the Reinforcement Learning Journal (RLJ).