International Conference on Machine Learning

ICML began as the International Workshop on Machine Learning, first held at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in July 1980 and organized by Jaime Carbonell, Ryszard S. Michalski, and Tom M. Mitchell. In 1993 it transitioned to a full conference series under the current name, building on nearly a decade of workshops.  Since the 2010s its proceedings have been published open-access in the Proceedings of Machine Learning Research (PMLR), which grew out of JMLR’s Workshop & Conference Proceedings and was renamed PMLR in 2015.

ICML has published many important research papers that form the foundation of modern Artificial Intelligence. Some notable works include Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's K-means clustering via PCA (ICML 2004); Google's Batch Normalization; Google Brain's EfficientNet (ICML 2019); OpenAI's CLIP (ICML 2021) and the UC Berkeley's Soft Actor-Critic (ICML 2018).

The number of submitted (and accepted) papers has sharply increased within 10 years; from 1037 (270) in 2015 to 12107 (3260) in 2025. Meanwhile, the acceptance rate continues to average between 21 % (2020) and 30 % (2024). 2026 marked a new record with 24,371 submitted papers, more than doubling the previous year. Accepted submissions are presented on-site as posters; furthermore, particularly outstanding contributions are presented orally or are designated by a committee as "spotlight papers." In 2026, 2.2% of submitted contributions were designated as "spotlight" and 0.7% additionally as "oral". In addition, the best contribution is honored annually by a jury with an "Outstanding Paper Award" (formally "Best Paper Award").

ICML’s scope spans the full breadth of machine learning, with particular emphasis on theoretical analysis, algorithmic innovation, and statistical learning. Compared to the other two big machine learning conferences NeurIPS and ICLR, ICML traditionally features more content on statistical learning theory, reinforcement learning and robotics, and optimization theory. Its annual proceedings are published in the open-access Proceedings of Machine Learning Research (PMLR).

ICML attracts sponsors seeking access to ML research and talent. Technology companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Apple are among sponsors, regularly publishing their research and recruiting researchers at the conference. Financial firms, such as Citadel Securities, Jane Street Capital and D.E. Shaw, also often have a presence at ICML.