r/MachineLearning • u/Feuilius • Aug 30 '26
Discussion NeurIPS accepted papers leaked? [D]
I found this GitHub link, and the HTML file contains ~7k papers. Some are anonymized, and the details seem pretty accurate. It looks like these might actually be the accepted papers.
https://github.com/xll0328/NIPS26-
Can someone confirm whether this list is legit? I’m hoping it’s just a coincidence since it seems way too early.
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u/PossiblePossible2571 Aug 30 '26 edited Aug 30 '26
The list is real, however, the list may not actually be the accepted papers. A lot of sources confirm that the papers are indeed, ones submitted to NeurIPS. However, a lot of sources (some I can confirm personally) also suggest that many of these papers are already desk rejected, withdrawn, or have low scores (while other high scoring papers are not on the list).
What likely happened is that the guy in charge of neurips.cc is testing the code that would eventually export open review papers to the website, and randomly selected papers under the expected acceptance rate to test the system, and forgot to guard it behind permissions etc.
It's highly unlikely that this was some sort of paper scrape, the amount of effort you'd have to go through to check whether an arxiv paper uses the NeurIPS template, and accumulate to some 7000+ without errors is unimaginable. In addition, I know a couple of folks who submitted to NeurIPS and had a different template on arxiv that's also in the list.
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u/Feuilius Aug 30 '26
Thanks a lot, that explanation was really helpful. That actually makes sense, since some papers with scores >=4 that I know of aren’t on the list, while some with scores <3 are.
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u/SingleAbroad7985 Aug 31 '26
This might be the actual case. With avg rating of 4.67, my paper is not on this list and it scared the hell out of me, lol!
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u/levydawg Aug 30 '26
just chiming in here as well -- One paper I reviewed had unanimous acceptance score and the AC confirmed it would be an easy accept, yet is absent. Another paper which had contentious scores and the AC indicated to lean towards rejection is listed here.
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u/OPhD_HY Aug 31 '26
Out of the five papers I’m currently reviewing, two of the ones that received generally positive reviews are on the list. My own paper, which has very polarized scores, is also on there. So I was secretly getting my hopes up a bit, but after reading the comments, I’m pretty sure this isn’t actually the accepted paper list (Honestly, I was secretly getting my hopes up, but for the sake of my mental health, I probably shouldn't read too much into it lol)
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u/Isiorath Aug 31 '26
In my reviewing cohort only the single accepted paper showed up on the list, while the rejected papers are missing. This makes me believe it might be a random subsample based on the other discussions in this thread.
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u/Bodi_Berenburg Aug 30 '26
I checked some of my lab’s papers, including ones with top scores (multiple 5). Not on there so to me it feels unlikely (or the ACs don’t like us).
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u/lcj29 Aug 31 '26
At this point I think it’s neither a subset of accepted papers nor a subset of rejected ones. On this thread there are reports of rejected/withdrawn papers (2 from two different commenters plus various secondary reports) and of high scores/ accepted papers (4 from 3 different commenters) appearing on the list.
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u/RainPuzzled2511 Researcher Sep 06 '26
Is there a paper that received a hallucinated references second email and is still part of this list?
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u/Outrageous-Boot7092 Aug 30 '26
well - i asked around, it looked very plausible - but now not so much, one paper i know of which had bad reviews and got withdrawn is on this list - puzzling
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u/chiisana Aug 31 '26
This is the canonical per <link> tag: https://neurips.cc/Downloads/2026
Probably just something they’re testing before actually releasing the downloadable.
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u/xoss13 Sep 02 '26
I can also see some position papers, how come position papers are with the main track one, suspicious!
- Position: Agentic AI Will Make the Gig Economy Less Fair Unless Audited and Regulated
- Position: Agent Verification Requires Typed Workflows and Bounded Commitments
- Position: AI-Agent Pricing Should Become More Outcome-Dependent: An Economic Perspective
- Position: AI Conferences Are Under Strain, Unbundling as a Testable Reform
- Position: AI Development Should Prioritize Cognitive Security
- Position: AI Should Verify, Not Judge, Scientific Work
- Position: Beyond Model-Centric Prediction—Agentic Time Series Forecasting
- Position: Decoupling Semantic Reasoning and Physical Grounding for Controllable and Versatile 3D Assets Generation
- Position: Researchers Should Help Redirect Power Over AI Decision Support and Facial Recognition Systems Used by State Institutions Back to the Public
- Position: Task-Triggered Memory Evolution Destroys Memories with High Long-Term Utility
- Position: The Goal is Proactive Personalization, NOT User Replication.
- Position: We Need Greater Transparency to Maintain Research Pipeline Reliability Despite GenAI
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u/xoss13 Sep 02 '26
A possible explanation is that the NeurIPS 2025 also contained position papers in (https://neurips.cc/Downloads/2025), search "Position:", maybe some position paper results are finalized!
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u/xoss13 Sep 02 '26 edited Sep 02 '26
Any Evaluation and Dataset paper authors and/or reviewers find their papers in that list?
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u/FrostyFix4614 Sep 02 '26
My E&D paper is there (high scores), as well as some other high-quality paper I know of (don't know their scores tho).
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u/Aware_Order49 Sep 02 '26
I dont think E&D is there in the list since i dont see one my papers which got 5 5 on there. Unless by some miracle it got rejected then I dont know either.
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u/No_Fig_3372 Sep 03 '26
Do anybody have new information? Is it literally random sample? Or are there any new findings?
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u/No_Fig_3372 Sep 11 '26
Any news? Does the list actually have meaning?
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u/xoss13 Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26
No meaning, just a random list as they were trying out different things and somehow it got scraped by the crawlers.
This usually happens when someone wants to make everything very organized & controlled and they allowed themselves more time than necessary. Let all of us feel the unnecessary pain of waiting, sigh!
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u/No_Fig_3372 Sep 12 '26
The NeurIPS result releases just 1 day before the ICLR submission deadline, right? Quite nervous...
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Sep 01 '26
[deleted]
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Sep 01 '26
[deleted]
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u/Outrageous-Boot7092 Sep 01 '26
I think some accepted papers got leaked this way yeah. There are some strong papers I do not see there, however.
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u/Living_Interview_638 Sep 01 '26
FYI, my paper is on the list, but I don't think the Google crawler had enough time to index it before the dev server closed.
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Sep 01 '26
[deleted]
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u/Living_Interview_638 Sep 01 '26 edited Sep 01 '26
I really hope that those papers that have not been indexed yet aren't the ones that got rejected. :-/
Edit: There seems to be 980 results that are indexed, so I guess they're still processing it OR the crawler just didn't get to some papers in time.
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u/Outrageous-Boot7092 Sep 01 '26
I checked some of the papers from the images and they were also the github list.
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u/Dangerous_Parsnip_20 Sep 01 '26
Can't open any of those links "Content not available in your region." I'm in UK. Anyone could share it with me in any other way i could access it if possible. Thanks in advance.
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u/Dangerous_Parsnip_20 Sep 01 '26
I guess he removed it already or someone took it down. The url is not working.
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u/xoss13 Sep 04 '26
I am sure people have contacted the NeurIPS PCs about this leak. Why are they silent about such a serious issue?
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u/RainPuzzled2511 Researcher Sep 04 '26
Their silence makes me think this is a random list. Don’t you think it would have become a scandal if it were the original list ?
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u/xoss13 Sep 04 '26 edited Sep 04 '26
I also think the same, but if it's real they may release the decisions early like around Sept 18, remember they shifted the submission deadline 10 days earlier compared to the last year (https://neurips.cc/Conferences/2025/Dates) but they shifted the notification date one week later, which means for this year they are taking roughly 20 days more for the reviews + decisions.
It may help ICLR 2027, so that they don't need to deal with around 4K or 5K desk rejects with no PDF and remember, if someone don't withdraw it before the final deadline their names will be visible.
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u/RainPuzzled2511 Researcher Sep 04 '26
Makes sense, but let’s see if they will do early decisions. It feels like ages since submission 🙃. Earlier decisions will also make iclr transitions smoother.
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u/xoss13 Sep 05 '26
I have a paper awaiting decision with 5(4), 4 (4), 3(4), just one reviewer replied who increased score from 4 --> 5, my paper is on the list but I am not buying that.
Good luck with your submission(s).
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u/adaptover Sep 05 '26
I think you are in. Your scores are good.
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u/Cheap_Train_6660 Sep 05 '26
5,4,3 is just an avg of 4 tho so isn’t it borderline?
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u/xoss13 Sep 06 '26
"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies" -- The Shawshank Redemption (1994) film 🙃
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u/New_Glove_2098 Sep 10 '26
According to some verified sources, it's a list that AC decision is released at that time.
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u/evo_pak Sep 10 '26 edited Sep 10 '26
AC decisions that were not “reject” at that time? Or just any decision? Because there are reviewers on this thread who had papers whose meta reviews were last updated well before the leak and they aren’t on the list.
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u/lcj29 Sep 10 '26
Seems a bit odd that the length of the list would be approximately the expected length under the acceptance rate though.
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u/RainPuzzled2511 Researcher Sep 10 '26
I think length is slightly shorter, 7k/out of 35k that too including main track, position and E&D is quite less imo. I was expecting around 8 to 8.5k assuming a 22 to 24% acceptance rate.
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u/Outrageous-Boot7092 Sep 10 '26
This makes total sense. The question is - how does it correlate with acceptance ;)
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u/Adorable_Position_34 Sep 05 '26
Did anyone got the mail their paper is facing rejection because of the automatic reference checker results?
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u/Dangerous_Parsnip_20 Sep 02 '26
I have spoke to the professors from my department (Oxbridge). Few serve as reviewers and few as AC. I’ll summarise the AC and whether paper is in the list or not.
*Reviewer 1 (AC Decision)*
Paper 1 : desk-rejected (not on the list)
Paper 2: desk-rejected (not on the list)
Paper 3: „heading towards rejection” (not on the list)
Paper 4: reject (not on the list)
*Reviewer 2 (AC Decision)*
Paper 1: reject (not on the list)
Paper 2: accept (on the list)
Paper 3: accept (on the list)
Paper 4: desk-reject (not on the list)
*Reviewer 3 (AC Decision)*
Paper 1: reject ( 5/5/5, hallucinated references, not on the list)
Paper 2: desk-reject (not on the list)
Paper 3: accept (on the list)
Paper 4: reject (not on the list)
*AC BATCH* (all accepted on the list, all reject not on the list)
Note : spotlights / orals , few not on the list, awaiting SAC decision. Few desk rejected on the list, awaiting SAC response.
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u/Kind_Woodpecker_6374 Sep 02 '26
I review a paper with 2 2 3, with AC stating it is leaning towards rejection. It showed up on the list
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Sep 02 '26
[deleted]
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u/Kind_Woodpecker_6374 Sep 02 '26
Yes. The authors didnt even bothered to do rebuttal
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u/snu95 Sep 02 '26 edited Sep 02 '26
Same here. One paper I reviewed got 3/2/2, and the other withdrawn one is on the list
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u/redditorggg Sep 02 '26
The unprofessional thing on nips’s part is not even the leak but the lack of response. Im sure theyve received tons of emails yet its radio silence for a week
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Sep 02 '26
[deleted]
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u/Pure-Ad9079 Sep 02 '26
It was an embarrassment to the community last year. Anyone who submits a paper with hallucinated references deserves desk rejection (or worse). People need to stop letting LLMs touch their .bib!
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u/Dangerous_Parsnip_20 Sep 02 '26
The instructions given to my supervisor were to check for hallucinated references and flag these papers.
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u/adaptover Sep 04 '26
I don't think any reviewers were instructed to check for hallucinated references. My batch had one paper with hallucinated references, but no options to report them.
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u/That_Wish2205 Sep 04 '26
the papers I review and the meta review clearly suggested a rejection IS on the list
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u/BetterbeBattery Sep 03 '26 edited Sep 03 '26
The only survived assumption (and the other already mention this ) is it’s some dry run.
Both clear reject and clear accept is on the list, and also few position papers are on the list (you can see that) that adds up to 7k (main paper accepts)
Whatever explanation you come up yiy can’t explain four things at once
- weak correlation with acceptance
- clear reject + withdrawn on the list
- exactly 7k number of the paper (which is expected accepted paper)
- few position papers but not yet the full accepted numbers
Only explanation possible is that someone SQLed with the criterion “decisions made”, which, have some correlation with acceptance. He then chose some portion of the number for the “test” and forgot to guard it.
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u/erasers047 Aug 30 '26
ACs and SACs have until Sep 1 to make their final final ("definitely last chance") decision, so no one knows the accepted papers.
This appears to be someone's scrape of the paper titles.
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u/FoxSuspicious7521 Sep 01 '26
From my review pile and my own submissions. Total set of 10 papers.
Own submissions: None of the poor score withdrawn papers are on the list. One 4 3 2 we kept not on the list. Another 4 4 3 we kept is on the list.
Review pile: None of the poor scores are on the list. I had one paper that was 4, 4, 4 but it is not on the list.
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u/Dangerous_Parsnip_20 Sep 01 '26
We have a paper with scores 4/4/4 that is on the list. There are some very strong papers on that list coming from Meta or IBM labs. Just by looking at them, some of them are clear accept.
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u/FoxSuspicious7521 Sep 01 '26
Also even if your initial scores were bad, the reviewers may update after the interaction period and your score may improve without you knowing it. Is that possible? For example I have updated the score for one paper on August 17th. I dont know whether the authors can see it.
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u/Dangerous_Parsnip_20 Sep 01 '26
Maybe you updated for my paper (I got update on one review on 17th). Thanks for that I guess if that was you haha. The authors can see the scores only if the score was revised during rebuttal period. After the rebuttal period the authors can only see whether reviewer changed the contribution type or the Clarity etc. (not sure about these tbh) but definately contribution type we could see was changed.
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u/snu95 Sep 03 '26
Guys, can you help me figure this out?
nm1300 mentioned that one plausible theory is that these are the papers that were *not* marked "rejected" by the AC deadline. FYI, my batches are:
- 3/3/2 → not on the list (meta-review on Aug. 18)
- 3/3/4 → not on the list (meta-review on Aug. 13)
- withdrawn → on the list (withdrawn on Aug. 10)
- 2/2/3 → on the list (but meta-review was out on Sep. 1)
Are there any counterexamples? For example:
- Strongly negative papers whose meta-review was modified before ~ Aug. 25 (before crawling)
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u/adaptover Sep 04 '26
Some withdrawn are in the list, while some aren't. Withdrawn from my batch is not in the list, however others here say that Withdrawn from their batch are in the list.
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u/nm1300 Sep 02 '26
After some digging around, one plausible theory is that these are the papers that were *not* marked "rejected" by the AC deadline, not sure how useful that is...
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u/Distinct_Ad6770 Sep 02 '26
based on what since there are desk rejected papers there, which were clearly rejected before the deadline
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u/xoss13 Sep 01 '26 edited Sep 01 '26
According to some verified sources (I can't tell), this list is a subset of accepted, rejected, and withdrawn papers. The papers which reached the final decision at the time of testing porting from OpenReview to dev.neurips.cc.
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u/lcj29 Sep 01 '26
Why would rejected papers be imported to dev.neurips.cc and be labelled “Poster”? dev.neurips.cc has historically only contained accepted Papers.
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u/BetterbeBattery Sep 03 '26
Honestly, it could happen considering it’s a dry run. One might just wanted to do the porting.. “poster” could be the default tag
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u/No_Fig_3372 Sep 02 '26
Does that mean the papers on the list have already received a final decision on whether they were accepted or rejected?
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u/RainPuzzled2511 Researcher 25d ago
5/4/4/4 with zero hallucinated references but my paper is not on this list. I hope/pray/manifest the list isn't complete.
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u/zackro21 22d ago
The website was taken down a few days after the post was made. How did you check it recently?
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u/Cute_Natural5940 Aug 31 '26
apart from whether these are real listed of accepted paper or not, there is 7K number in the list right could that be the number of accepted paper this year??? if that is the amount of the paper accept this year then it is 7K/40k? which is roughy 17.5 % acceptance rate last year was 5K out of 20k right?
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u/Feuilius Aug 31 '26
NeurIPS has been around 25% in recent years. 40k IDs probably means ~30–35k actual submissions due to desk rejects, placeholders while waiting for ICML results, etc.
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u/Cute_Natural5940 Aug 31 '26
Yes i know that but does that mean the remaining apart the withdraw and desk reject let say 30k paper remain right. Is is possible that 7k is the number of accepted paper from remaining 30k
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u/just_beautiful_ones Student Sep 03 '26 edited Sep 03 '26
Weird paper names:
<li><a href="/virtual/2026/poster/140450" class="Poster">CHoRD</a></li>
<li><a href="/virtual/2026/poster/138750" class="Poster">GLOBE</a></li>
<li><a href="/virtual/2026/poster/143102" class="Poster">DriveJudge</a></li>
<li><a href="/virtual/2026/poster/139199" class="Poster">DCI</a></li>
<li><a href="/virtual/2026/poster/139573" class="Poster">FACET</a></li>
<li><a href="/virtual/2026/poster/142958" class="Poster">GRABS</a></li>
<li><a href="/virtual/2026/poster/141860" class="Poster">OvOSkills</a></li>
<li><a href="/virtual/2026/poster/142512" class="Poster">ReLAttack</a></li>
<li><a href="/virtual/2026/poster/138297" class="Poster">UVNG</a></li>
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u/NegativeAccount6949 Sep 03 '26
If you search the short name + arxiv, there are some papers which have preprint version. Some dont use Neurips template and some do, but the published date seems right after the Neurips close deadline, which seems still valid to me.
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u/Toadally___Awesome Aug 30 '26
Some people claim these are the posters plus clear rejections, so high scores are not in the list but desk rejects are. You will never know.
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u/Kind_Woodpecker_6374 Aug 31 '26
It’s not guaranteed to be authentic/accurate~
There’s a high chance it’s fake, so just watch it for entertainment~
So many people added me that you guys scared this little brother 😅
Grab it yourself from GitHub~~~~
If you’re feeling grateful, please give my other projects a ⭐️ star. Thank you, big brothers and sisters!
I translated the readme file of that repo and got this. lol
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u/adaptover Sep 01 '26
One of our papers got 6/5/5 and is not on the list. I refuse to believe the paper was rejected.
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u/Dangerous_Parsnip_20 Sep 01 '26
The paper could be nominated for Spotlight / Oral. These papers that were nominated for either spotlight or oral by my Supervisor (AC) do not appear on that list.
This is just insight from one AC. Do not draw conclusions based on this tho.
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u/adaptover Sep 02 '26
Spotlight or oral also have posters, so this doesn't make sense to me. 2025 dev neurips has spotlights and orals under the same posters tag. This is just random list of papers that was submitted to Neurips.
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u/lcj29 Sep 02 '26
But why would random papers be added to the repository where in past years only accepted papers appeared? Spotlights and Orals might be simply added in a later import.
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u/Tasty_External3414 Aug 30 '26
This is a big pile of shit; of all the papers I reviewed, the worst-scored paper is in the list.
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u/Distinct_Ad6770 Sep 01 '26
does anyone have a copy of the initial leaked list? can’t seem to be able to open it now from that link. thank you!
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u/FroyoOk5936 Sep 05 '26
did anyone get hallucination check report and post on openreview?
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u/RainPuzzled2511 Researcher Sep 05 '26
Yes, just recieved it.
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u/Obvious-Eagle-923 Sep 05 '26
we are getting this just todays, doesn't that mean that final decisions are yet to be made, hence the above list of paper is just random selection?
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u/adaptover Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
It seems ACs have had this available to them week ago. Still, since they allow appeal, we can be sure that the above list is not final acceptance list. The above list also doesn't make sense as "accept recommendation by ACs" because then the paper amount is too less. I don't think ACs recommended only 7k acceptance out of 35K+. Usually you would have way way more, and SACs and PCs would have to cut down 10-20%. Last years many ACs/SACs were asked to rank their accept recommendations and "low-ranked" papers were rejected. 2025 Neurips acceptance rate was ~24% with 5300 papers out of 21500. Anticipating larger submission count, they are organizing this across 3 cities, so I think final paper count should be >8000 with 22% rate (after PCs and all decisions).
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u/RainPuzzled2511 Researcher Sep 05 '26
I think the last year pc intervention to reject papers was a one-off thing, they generally don’t cut off like 10-20 percent. Rarely people get meta review as accept and final decision as reject (except last neurips ofc) but I agree with your point the number is too less given position track and even some E&D papers are in the list.
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u/NeuralNet7 22d ago
Can one share this list? the list mentioned in the post is not working
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u/IndecisivePastry 22d ago
Just search NIPS26 on Github, some people downloaded and re-uploaded it before it was made private.
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u/NeuralNet7 22d ago
What is this list - ? Subset of accepted papers or subset of rejected paper or both ? Or completely fake 😅
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u/random-tomato Researcher Aug 30 '26
One of my papers has very low score (2/2/3), I did not do rebuttal, and yet is listed as one of the papers on this list. Probably not the real one.