# Chronos-2: From Univariate to Universal Forecasting

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.15821 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.15821/

## Key facts

- Cited by 194 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 38 of its 65 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Oct 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 38)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10683/) (2019)
- [RoFormer: Enhanced Transformer with Rotary Position Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09864/) (2021)
- [Efficient Streaming Language Models with Attention Sinks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.17453/) (2023)
- [A Time Series is Worth 64 Words: Long-term Forecasting with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.14730/) (2022)
- [ViViT: A Video Vision Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15691/) (2021)
- [DeepAR: Probabilistic Forecasting with Autoregressive Recurrent Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04110/) (2017)
- [Temporal Fusion Transformers for Interpretable Multi-horizon Time Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.09363/) (2019)
- [Chronos: Learning the Language of Time Series](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07815/) (2024)
- [N-BEATS: Neural basis expansion analysis for interpretable time series forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.10437/) (2019)
- [Time-LLM: Time Series Forecasting by Reprogramming Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01728/) (2023)
- [A decoder-only foundation model for time-series forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10688/) (2023)
- [Unified Training of Universal Time Series Forecasting Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02592/) (2024)
- [Large Language Models Are Zero-Shot Time Series Forecasters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07820/) (2023)
- [Autoregressive Denoising Diffusion Models for Multivariate Probabilistic Time Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.12072/) (2021)
- [WeatherBench: A benchmark dataset for data-driven weather forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.00469/) (2020)
- [Monash Time Series Forecasting Archive](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.06643/) (2021)
- [GIFT-Eval: A Benchmark For General Time Series Forecasting Model Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.10393/) (2024)
- [Sundial: A Family of Highly Capable Time Series Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.00816/) (2025)
- [High-Dimensional Multivariate Forecasting with Low-Rank Gaussian Copula Processes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03002/) (2019)
- [N-HiTS: Neural Hierarchical Interpolation for Time Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12886/) (2022)
- [TiRex: Zero-Shot Forecasting Across Long and Short Horizons with Enhanced In-Context Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23719/) (2025)
- [LargeST: A Benchmark Dataset for Large-Scale Traffic Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08259/) (2023)
- [Meta-learning framework with applications to zero-shot time-series forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.02887/) (2020)
- [Domain Adaptation for Time Series Forecasting via Attention Sharing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.06828/) (2021)
- [This Time is Different: An Observability Perspective on Time Series Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14766/) (2025)
- [fev-bench: A Realistic Benchmark for Time Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.26468/) (2025)
- [From Tables to Time: Extending TabPFN-v2 to Time Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.02945/) (2025)
- [AutoGluon-TimeSeries: AutoML for Probabilistic Time Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.05566/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 194)

- [Moirai 2.0: When Less Is More for Time Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.11698/) (2025)
- [It's TIME: Towards the Next Generation of Time Series Forecasting Benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12147/) (2026)
- [Toto 2.0: Time Series Forecasting Enters the Scaling Era](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.20119/) (2026)
- [Timer-S1: A Billion-Scale Time Series Foundation Model with Serial Scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.04791/) (2026)
- [TabPFN-3: Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13986/) (2026)
- [Revisiting the Generic Transformer: Deconstructing a Strong Baseline for Time Series Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.06909/) (2026)
- [SleepLM: Natural-Language Intelligence for Human Sleep](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.23605/) (2026)
- [MantisV2: Closing the Zero-Shot Gap in Time Series Classification with Synthetic Data and Test-Time Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.17868/) (2026)
- [QuitoBench: A High-Quality Open Time Series Forecasting Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26017/) (2026)
- [Falcon-X: A Time Series Foundation Model for Heterogeneous Multivariate Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.27286/) (2026)
- [Learning the Context of Errors: Black-Box Online Adaptation of Time Series Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.14222/) (2026)
- [Synapse: Adaptive Arbitration of Complementary Expertise in Time Series Foundational Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.05460/) (2025)
- [TimeOmni-VL: Unified Models for Time Series Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.17149/) (2026)
- [GlucoFM: A Dual-Stream Foundation Model for Continuous Glucose Monitoring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.30865/) (2026)
- [TFRBench: A Reasoning Benchmark for Evaluating Forecasting Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.05364/) (2026)
- [Overcoming the Modality Gap in Context-Aided Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.12451/) (2026)
- [CTF4Nuclear: Common Task Framework for Nuclear Fission and Fusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15549/) (2026)
- [KairosAgent: Agentic Time Series Forecasting with Fused Semantic Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.30002/) (2026)
- [Position: Universal Time Series Foundation Models Rest on a Category Error](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.05287/) (2026)
- [Position: A Dynamical Systems Perspective is Needed to Advance Time Series Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.16864/) (2026)
- [TempusBench: An Evaluation Framework for Time-Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.11529/) (2026)
- [TS-ICL: A Flexible Time-Indexed Foundation Model for Time Series via In-Context Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.05878/) (2026)
- [Rethinking Zero-Shot Time Series Classification: From Task-specific Classifiers to In-Context Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.00620/) (2026)
- [Is Flow Matching Just Trajectory Replay for Sequential Data?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.08318/) (2026)
- [Probabilistic NDVI Forecasting from Sparse Satellite Time Series and Weather Covariates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.17683/) (2026)
- [Time Series Foundation Models as Strong Baselines in Transportation Forecasting: A Large-Scale Benchmark Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.24238/) (2026)
- [Reasoning-Aware Training for Time Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.08625/) (2026)
- [Toward World Modeling of Physiological Signals with Chaos-Theoretic Balancing and Latent Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15465/) (2026)
- [Why Do Time Series Models Need Long Context Windows?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.01999/) (2026)
- [CardioState-JEPA: Delay-Aware Cross-Modal Learning of a Shared Cardiac Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.12944/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Pretrained time series models have enabled inference-only forecasting systems that produce accurate predictions without task-specific training. However, existing approaches largely focus on univariate forecasting, limiting their applicability in real-world scenarios where multivariate data and covariates play a crucial role. We present Chronos-2, a pretrained model capable of handling univariate, multivariate, and covariate-informed forecasting tasks in a zero-shot manner. Chronos-2 employs a group attention mechanism that facilitates in-context learning (ICL) through efficient information sharing across multiple time series within a group, which may represent sets of related series, variates of a multivariate series, or targets and covariates in a forecasting task. These general capabilities are achieved through training on synthetic datasets that impose diverse multivariate structures on univariate series. Chronos-2 delivers state-of-the-art performance across three comprehensive benchmarks: fev-bench, GIFT-Eval, and Chronos Benchmark II. On fev-bench, which emphasizes multivariate and covariate-informed forecasting, Chronos-2's universal ICL capabilities lead to substantial improvements over existing models. On tasks involving covariates, it consistently outperforms baselines by a wide margin. Case studies in the energy and retail domains further highlight its practical advantages. The in-context learning capabilities of Chronos-2 establish it as a general-purpose forecasting model that can be used "as is" in real-world forecasting pipelines.