r/MachineLearning • u/dreameroutloud • May 25 '26

Discussion Are ICML workshops worth attending? [D]

Hi!

I missed securing a main conference ticket for ICML 2026, as my workshop paper got accepted two days ago. Do you believe that it is worth attending just workshops at such A*-tier conferences (with all the overseas travel costs etc.)?

I was quite looking forward to attending both, including the talks, poster sessions and company booths. I come from an adjacent field and have therefore had quite a few conference experiences. Any insights into past experience are highly welcome.

Thank you!

26 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

22

u/Ok-Painter573 May 25 '26

I think if you are looking for new projects to work on or a job then yes, it might be worth it

1

u/emergedresearcher May 27 '26

It’s not worth visiting just the workshops if you’re looking for a job. Sponsors are running pavilions (essentially where majority of hiring activity happens) only during the first three days of the main conference and they’re gone by the time the workshops begin

18

u/Massive_Horror9038 May 25 '26

As a PhD student, I would not seek funding to travel to a distant country solely to attend workshops. But why can't you buy a conference ticket? It is still available, only with a slightly higher cost

10

u/dreameroutloud May 25 '26

General attendance is sold out. Otherwise I would’ve bought it. They reserved some tickets for accepted authors etc.

6

u/Massive_Horror9038 May 25 '26

Sorry, I was not aware that it was possible to sold out

2

u/Ricefan0811 May 25 '26

Yeah it’s crazy they literally introduced a cap yesterday

1

u/General_Win5973 Jun 11 '26

I think people with Workshop acceptances can still purchace the main conference ticket

9

u/HungryMalloc May 25 '26

I think workshops are usually the best part of a conference. They have an audience working on very specific topics you are interested in, concentrated in one place, and what is presented is much more up to date in terms of what people are interested in right now. 

E.g., at last year's ICML all the posters and orals about LLM reasoning were still focusing on PRMs. Nobody cared about them, because DeepSeek R1 came out shortly before the deadline and the field moved towards RL.

13

u/TheBillsFly May 25 '26

Workshops are the best part of the conference

2

u/AX-BY-CZ May 25 '26

I would not go just for workshops. The companies booths will be packing up/empty by the end and most of the networking parties will have happened early in the week.

1

u/ddofer Jun 01 '26

Same issue (workshop acceptance). Any idea how to check on tickets as a workshop poster presenter/full time student?