Related work

The foundational work on continual learning, 1980 to 2026: methods, theory, benchmarks, surveys, and the neuroscience of memory. Updated weekly; some carry our notes.

126 papers of 8,653 · showing 1–50Sort Recent · Most cited
  1. 2026PDF ↗
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  3. 2026
    CobwebTM: Probabilistic Concept Formation for Lifelong and Hierarchical Topic ModelingKarthik Singaravadivelan, Anant Gupta, Zekun Wang, Christopher MaclellanACL
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  4. 2026
    HiEdit: Lifelong Model Editing with Hierarchical Reinforcement LearningYangfan Wang, Tianyang Sun, Chen Tang … Jingchi JiangACL
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  5. 2026
    A Layer-wise Analysis of Supervised Fine-TuningQinghua Zhao, Xueling Gong, Xinyu Chen … Xinlu LiACL
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  11. 2026
    From Storage to Experience: A Survey on the Evolution of LLM Agent Memory MechanismsJinghao Luo, Yuchen Tian, Chuxue Cao … Jing MaACL · South China Normal University · Hong Kong Baptist University · +3
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  12. 2026
    Mitigating Catastrophic Forgetting in Target Language Adaptation of LLMs via Source-Shielded UpdatesAtsuki Yamaguchi, Terufumi Morishita, Aline Villavicencio, Νικόλαος ΑλέτραςACL · University of Sheffield · Hitachi (Japan)
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  13. 2026
    PASs-MoE: Mitigating Misaligned Co-drift among Router and Experts via Pathway Activation Subspaces for Continual LearningZhiyan Hou, Haiyun Guo, Haokai Ma … Jinqiao WangACL · Chinese Academy of Sciences · University of Chinese Academy of Sciences · +2
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  14. 2026
    Spectral Disentanglement: Rank-Aware Task Adaptation for Rehearsal-free Continual Learning in LLMsHuanxuan Liao, Shizhu He, Yupu Hao … Kang LiuACL · Shandong Institute of Automation · Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence · +3
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  15. 2026
    Towards Self-Evolving Agents: Enabling Autonomy through Interactive Experience RefinementCheng Yang, Xuemeng Yang, Licheng Wen … Haifeng LiACL · Central South University · Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence · +4
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  16. 2026
    Evolutionary Strategies at Scale lead to Catastrophic ForgettingImmanuel Abdi, Akshat Gupta, Micah Mok … Gopala AnumanchipalliACL · Berkeley College · University of California, Berkeley
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  17. 2026
    Reinforcement Learning with Semantic Rewards Enables Low-Resource Language Expansion without Alignment TaxZeli Su, Ziyin Zhang, Zhou Liu … Wentao ZhangACL · Minzu University of China · Shanghai Jiao Tong University · +4
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  18. 2026
    SLoRA: Balancing Plasticity and Forgetting in Large Language Models for Continual LearningLina Yang, Yusheng Liao, Yanfeng Wang, Yu Guang WangACL · Shanghai Jiao Tong University
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  19. 2026
    Can Spectral-Clipping Enable Better Learning While Forgetting Less for Low-Rank Adaptation?Hyowon Wi, Noseong ParkACL · Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
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  20. 2026
    From Experts to Bases: Orthogonal Subspace Mixture for Continual Multimodal Instruction TuningPei Chen, Xilai Wang, Shiqixu … Lingyun SunACL · Zhejiang University
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  21. 2026
    Harmonizing the Past, Present, and Future: A Null-Space Constrained Region-Specific Method for Continual Learning in LLMsJinhui Chen, Shizhu He, Xingchang Yang … Jun ZhaoACL · Shandong Institute of Automation · Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence · +3
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  22. 2026
    Soft Orthogonal Low-Rank Adaptation for Knowledge Sharing in Large Language Model Continual LearningYitong Wang, Xue Han, Wenchun Gao … Junlan FengACL · Jiuquan Iron & Steel (China) · China Mobile (China) · +1
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  23. 2026
    The Dominance of Text Space: Unveiling the Asymmetric Nature of Cross-Modal Alignment in Large Language ModelsLinqing Chen, Hanmeng Zhong, Wentao Wu, Peng ZhouACL · Suzhou Research Institute
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  24. 2026
    VFA: Empowering Multilingual MLLMs via Vision-Free AdaptationYixia Li, Yaqing Shi, Zhiwen Ruan … Furu WeiACL · Southern University of Science and Technology · Shanghai University of Finance and Economics · +3
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  25. 2026PDF ↗
  26. 2026
    SCALE: Upscaled Continual Learning of Large Language ModelsJin-woo Lee, Junhwa Choi, Bongkyu Hwang … Suk-Hoon JungACL
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  27. 2026PDF ↗
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  31. 2025PDF ↗
  32. 2025
    Continual Gradient Low-Rank Projection Fine-Tuning for LLMsChenxu Wang, Yilin Lyu, Zicheng Sun, Liping JingACL
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  35. 2025
    Enhancing Multimodal Continual Instruction Tuning with BranchLoRADuzhen Zhang, Yongcheng Ren, Zhongzhi Li … Bai, JinfengACL
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  38. 2025
    Model Editing with Graph-Based External MemoryYash Kumar Atri, Ahmed Alaa, Thomas HartvigsenACL
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  41. 2025
    SEE: Continual Fine-tuning with Sequential Ensemble of ExpertsZhilin Wang, Yafu Li, Xiaoye Qu, Yu ChengACL
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  42. 2025
    TiC-LM: A Web-Scale Benchmark for Time-Continual LLM PretrainingJeffrey Li, Mohammadreza Armandpour, Iman Mirzadeh … Fartash FaghriACL
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  43. 2026PDF ↗
  44. 2025PDF ↗
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  47. 2025
    Unveiling and Addressing Pseudo Forgetting in Large Language ModelsHuashan Sun, Yizhe Yang, Yinghao Li … Yang GaoACL · Beijing Institute of Technology
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  48. 2025
  49. 2025
  50. 2025
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. By default it shows the 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. The rest are one click away under “All papers”. 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.