International Conference on Machine Learning

The International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) traces its origins to the International Workshop on Machine Learning, first held at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in July 1980, organized by Jaime Carbonell, Ryszard S. Michalski, and Tom M. Mitchell. Subsequent workshops were held irregularly through the 1980s and early 1990s before the series transitioned to a fully annual conference format in 1993 under the current name. ICML is organized by the International Machine Learning Society (IMLS), a nonprofit corporation (EIN: 20-0158429) incorporated in California and granted 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status in April 2004. IMLS was formally established around 2001 to provide a stable legal and financial framework for the conference, which had previously been managed informally by host institutions. IMLS also oversees the Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR) and the open-access Proceedings of Machine Learning Research (PMLR), which publishes ICML proceedings. The conference is governed by a rotating board of trustees and program committee. All officers serve as volunteers with no compensation. Each annual edition is held at a different international venue — recent and upcoming editions include Vancouver (2025) and Seoul (2026). The conference has grown dramatically in scale, with submitted papers increasing from roughly 1,000 in 2015 to over 24,000 in 2026. ICML is recognized alongside NeurIPS and ICLR as one of the three top-tier machine learning conferences. Its proceedings are published open-access through PMLR. The conference is primarily funded through registration fees and corporate sponsorships.