Related work

The foundational work on continual learning, 1988 to 2026: methods, theory, benchmarks, surveys, and the neuroscience of memory. Updated weekly; some carry our notes.

1,140 papers of 7,070 · showing 1–50Sort Recent · Most cited
  1. 2026
    Discrete synaptic states and context-modulated readouts support continual learningYuan Gao, Ştefan Mihalaş, Denis TurcubioRxiv · University of Washington · Allen Institute
  2. 2026PDF ↗
  3. 2026
    LifeMem: Enabling Lifelong Experience Reuse for LLM AgentsYuli Qiu, Yutong Li, Wei Su … Yuang GuoarXiv
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  4. 2026
    Plateau-gated one-shot plasticity supports continual recognition memoryGuanchun Li, Sandro Romani, Jeffrey C. MageebioRxiv · Howard Hughes Medical Institute · Janelia Research Campus
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  5. 2026PDF ↗
  6. 2026
    Distilling Image Prototypes for Guided Test-Time AdaptationLiwen Wang, Xingbo Dong, Iman Yi Liao … Zhe JinarXiv
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  7. 2026
    When Synthetic Data Hurts: On Catastrophic Forgetting in Skill Retrieval for LLM AgentsSyed Shariyar Murtaza, Yifan Nie, Utkarsh Soni … Arvid FrydenlundarXiv
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  8. 2026
    AdalReID: Auto-selected Knowledge Adapters for Lifelong Person Re-identification.Xue-Lin Qian, Rui-Qi Wu, Zhong-Ling Huang … Junwei HanTPAMI
  9. 2026
    Continual Learning Mechanisms Compose for Long-Horizon MemorizationZheyuan Zhang, Alvin Zhang, Daniel Khashabi, Tianmin ShuarXiv
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  10. 2026
    Hyperspherical semantic compensation of vision-language models for continual learningHongsheng Zhang, Zhong Ji, Chen Tang, Yanwei PangKnowledge-Based Systems · Tianjin University · Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence · +1
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  16. 2026
    Mitigating Performance Discrepancy in Cross-Domain 3D Class-Incremental LearningJinge Ma, Gautham Vinod, Bruce Coburn … Fengqing ZhuarXiv
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  17. 2026
    EvoHarnessBench: Can Your Agents Keep Pace with an Evolving Harness?Zixuan Ke, Vaidehi Patil, Haizhou Shi … Shafiq JotyarXiv
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  18. 2026
    Robust adaptation of visual representations for few-shot class-incremental learning via geometric calibrationTao Zhang, C.L. Philip Chen, Xiwen Luo … Jiehao LiPattern Recognition · South China University of Technology · South China Agricultural University · +1
  19. 2026
    Towards Understanding Pause Token Fine-Tuning Dynamics: A Mode Retention PerspectiveJaehyeon Kim, Suhwan Kim, Nakyung Lee … Jungwoo LeearXiv
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  20. 2026
    MASkills: Continual Skills Optimization for Multi-Agent LLM SystemsHuaiyuan Yao, Xiaoou Liu, Charles Fleming … Hua WeiarXiv
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  21. 2026
    A scalable complexity-regularized modular network for continual learningZiye Fang, Bo Wan, Shangqi Guo, Jian K. LiuNeurocomputing · Xidian University · Human Computer Interaction (Switzerland) · +2
  22. 2026
    Bridging Continual Learning and Green Cloud Computing: Foundations for Sustainable Time Series Anomaly DetectionMateusz Smendowski, Roberto Corizzo, Nathalie Japkowicz, Piotr NawrockiJournal of Grid Computing
  23. 2026
    Emergence of Fibrations, Compression, and Symmetry Breaking in Artificial Neural NetworksOsvaldo Matías Velarde, Lucas C. Parra, Alireza Hashemi, Hernan A MaksearXiv
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  24. 2026
    Learning Without Forgetting for Continual Learning in LLMs Through Adaptive LoRA RanksFuli Qiao, Mehrdad MahdaviMachine Learning · Pennsylvania State University
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  28. 2026
    SELECT: SELEctive Context Transfer for Class-Incremental Semantic SegmentationAvi Gupta, Saurabh Yadav, Koteswar Rao Jerripothula, Tammam TilloarXiv
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  29. 2026
    Continual learning via semantic memory systemMingsen Luo, Qihe Liu, Fei Ye … Shijie ZhouPattern Recognition · University of Electronic Science and Technology of China · University of York
  30. 2026
    Structural generalization and continual learning enabled by factorized entorhinal-hippocampal memory and entorhinal-parietal action circuitsJaedong Hwang, Sujaya Neupane, Mehrdad Jazayeri, Ila FietebioRxiv · McGovern Institute for Brain Research · Coherent (United States) · +1
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  31. 2026
    Continual learning via dynamic expandable task-specific and general representationsQihe Liu, yongcheng zhong, Fei Ye … ShiJie ZhouKnowledge-Based Systems · University of Electronic Science and Technology of China · University of York
  32. 2026
    Temporal Memory-Aware Online Test-Time Adaptation on Dynamic GraphsBo Li, Xin Zheng, Ming Jin … Shirui PanarXiv
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  33. 2026
    A complementary learning system for continual episodic memory in large language modelsXu Pan, Ely Hahami, Roy Siegelmann, Haim SompolinskybioRxiv · Harvard University Press · Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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  34. 2026
    Fast Weight Attention for Continual LearningYifan Zhang, Steve Ta, Jasper Zhang … Andrew Chi-Chih YaoarXiv
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  36. 2026
    Memory Anchors for Continual Robot LearningMaximilian Du, Zhanyi Sun, Chen Xu … Shuran SongarXiv
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  37. 2026
    Parameter Efficient Continual Learning for Sparse Event-Based TransformersVaishnavi Nagabhushana, Kartikay Agrawal, Ayon BorthakurarXiv
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  38. 2026
    Thomson: Continual Learning of Frontier Models for SovereignAIShengzhuang Chen, Jerrod Parker, Yejin Bang … Jonathan Richard SchwarzarXiv
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  41. 2026
    A Visual Dependence-Aware Framework for Multimodal Unsupervised Continual Post-TrainingKaichen Li, Zhilin Zhu, Jianhao Huang … Changsheng XuarXiv
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  42. 2026
    Complementary Asymmetric Representation Learning for Exemplar-Free Class-Incremental LearningRunhang Chen, Xiao‐Yuan Jing, Xiaodong JiaACM Transactions · Wuhan University · Henan University of Engineering · +2
  43. 2026
    Lost but not erased: Finding traces of a forgotten language in neural speech modelsPeter Plantinga, Charlotte Moore, Peter Donhauser … Denise KleinarXiv
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  45. 2026
    Preference Data Selection for Mitigating the Alignment Tax in Large Language ModelsMinsu Kim, Jianxun Lian, Xing Xie, Steven Euijong WhangarXiv
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  46. 2026
    Rethinking Continual Learning Through Self-Adaptive LearningEhsan Hallaji, Roozbeh Razavi‐FarMachine Learning and Knowledge Extraction · University of New Brunswick
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  48. 2026
    Reinforced Interactive Continual Learning via Real-time Noisy Human FeedbackYutao Yang, Jie Zhou, Junsong Li … Liang HeExpert Systems with Applications · East China Normal University · Shanghai Xuhui Central Hospital
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  49. 2026
    Few-shot, continual learning for spiking neuromorphic olfactionKevin Max, Yang ShenNeuromorphic Computing and Engineering · Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University
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  50. 2026
    Few-shot, continual learning for spiking neuromorphic olfactionKevin Max, Yang ShenNeuromorphic Computing and Engineering
About this index

We keep this list because we read the field and wanted one place to see it. It covers work on continual learning itself, in the core areas of machine learning, and leaves out papers that apply it inside another field, such as medical imaging or fault diagnosis. It lists only papers we have a reason to trust: published at a venue like NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR or TPAMI, or written by someone who has published there, or cited a few hundred times. Preprints that later get accepted, and authors who later publish at those venues, are picked up by the weekly run. It is seeded from the community lists kept by ContinualAI and by Xialei Liu, then filled out from OpenAlex, and every week a script looks for new papers on OpenAlex and arXiv. A model reads each candidate and decides whether it belongs; a person reviews the additions before they go live. Authors and affiliations come from OpenAlex, so a recent preprint can lack its institutions for a week or two.

Missing something, or filed under the wrong venue? Write to hello@unify.ai with the arXiv id or DOI.