mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Multi-Task GRPO: Reliable LLM Reasoning Across Tasks

arXiv 2602.05547 ↗First posted 5 Feb 2026cs.CL cs.AI cs.LGcited by 12

On the map: LLM reasoning → Reinforcement learning for reasoning

Abstract (arXiv)

RL-based post-training with GRPO is widely used to improve large language models on individual reasoning tasks. However, real-world deployment requires reliable performance across diverse tasks. A straightforward multi-task adaptation of GRPO often leads to imbalanced outcomes, with some tasks dominating optimization while others stagnate. Moreover, tasks can vary widely in how frequently prompts yield zero advantages (and thus zero gradients), which further distorts their effective contribution to the optimization signal. To address these issues, we propose a novel Multi-Task GRPO (MT-GRPO) algorithm that (i) dynamically adapts task weights to explicitly optimize worst-task performance and promote balanced progress across tasks, and (ii) introduces a ratio-preserving sampler to ensure task-wise policy gradients reflect the adapted weights. Experiments on both 3-task and 9-task settings show that MT-GRPO consistently outperforms baselines in worst-task accuracy. In particular, MT-GRPO achieves 16-28% and 6% absolute improvement on worst-task performance over standard GRPO and DAPO, respectively, while maintaining competitive average accuracy. Moreover, MT-GRPO requires 50% fewer training steps to reach 50% worst-task accuracy in the 3-task setting, demonstrating substantially improved efficiency in achieving reliable performance across tasks.

Key facts. Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reinforcement learning for reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 57 of its 92 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 5 Feb 2026.

Builds on

57 of 92 references.

Closest ancestors · 18

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026GDPO: Group reward-Decoupled Normalization Policy Optimization for Multi-reward RL Optimization8 Jan
  2. 2025Multi-Reward GRPO for Stable and Prosodic Single-Codebook TTS LLMs at Scale26 Nov
  3. 2025Reasoning Curriculum: Bootstrapping Broad LLM Reasoning from Math30 Oct
  4. 2025Omni-Thinker: Scaling Multi-Task RL in LLMs with Hybrid Reward and Task Scheduling20 Jul
  5. 2025Curriculum Reinforcement Learning from Easy to Hard Tasks Improves LLM Reasoning7 Jun
  6. 2025Self-Evolving Curriculum for LLM Reasoning20 May
  7. 2025Learning Like Humans: Advancing LLM Reasoning Capabilities via Adaptive Difficulty Curriculum Learning and Expert-Guided Self-Reformulation13 May
  8. 2025Nemotron-CrossThink: Scaling Self-Learning beyond Math Reasoning15 Apr
  9. 2025DUMP: Automated Distribution-Level Curriculum Learning for RL-based LLM Post-training13 Apr
  10. 2025VAPO: Efficient and Reliable Reinforcement Learning for Advanced Reasoning Tasks7 Apr
  11. 2025Open-Reasoner-Zero: An Open Source Approach to Scaling Up Reinforcement Learning on the Base Model31 Mar
  12. 2025Understanding R1-Zero-Like Training: A Critical Perspective26 Mar
6 more
  1. 2025DAPO: An Open-Source LLM Reinforcement Learning System at Scale18 Mar
  2. 2025Learning to Reason at the Frontier of Learnability17 Feb
  3. 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning22 Jan
  4. 2024Tulu 3: Pushing Frontiers in Open Language Model Post-Training22 Nov
  5. 2022Constitutional AI: Harmlessness from AI Feedback15 Dec
  6. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms20 Jul

Other references · 39

  1. 2014Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimizationcited by 36,960
  2. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 8,851
  3. 2021Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Datasetcited by 5,203
  4. 2019Fine-Tuning Language Models from Human Preferencescited by 2,124
  5. 2024Qwen2 Technical Reportcited by 2,076
  6. 2025Search-R1: Training LLMs to Reason and Leverage Search Engines with Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,371
  7. 2019Distributionally Robust Neural Networks for Group Shifts: On the Importance of Regularization for Worst-Case Generalizationcited by 1,232
  8. 2025Group Sequence Policy Optimizationcited by 788
  9. 2024MiniCPM: Unveiling the Potential of Small Language Models with Scalable Training Strategiescited by 694
  10. 2025Vision-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 653
  11. 2023DoReMi: Optimizing Data Mixtures Speeds Up Language Model Pretrainingcited by 385
  12. 2025L1: Controlling How Long A Reasoning Model Thinks With Reinforcement Learningcited by 381
27 more
  1. 2025MiniMax-M1: Scaling Test-Time Compute Efficiently with Lightning Attentioncited by 248
  2. 2024RegMix: Data Mixture as Regression for Language Model Pre-trainingcited by 172
  3. 2024VinePPO: Refining Credit Assignment in RL Training of LLMscited by 168
  4. 2020Gradient Vaccine: Investigating and Improving Multi-task Optimization in Massively Multilingual Modelscited by 167
  5. 2019Distributionally Robust Language Modelingcited by 142
  6. 2025REASONING GYM: Reasoning Environments for Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewardscited by 121
  7. 2020Understanding and Improving Information Transfer in Multi-Task Learningcited by 113
  8. 2024Back to Basics: Revisiting REINFORCE Style Optimization for Learning from Human Feedback in LLMscited by 103
  9. 2025Does Math Reasoning Improve General LLM Capabilities? Understanding Transferability of LLM Reasoningcited by 101
  10. 2025Olmo 3cited by 95
  11. 2023DoGE: Domain Reweighting with Generalization Estimationcited by 87
  12. 2021RotoGrad: Gradient Homogenization in Multitask Learningcited by 82
  13. 2022Auto-Lambda: Disentangling Dynamic Task Relationshipscited by 73
  14. 2025Nemotron-CLIMB: CLustering-based Iterative Data Mixture Bootstrapping for Language Model Pre-trainingcited by 62
  15. 2024Mixture-of-LoRAs: An Efficient Multitask Tuning for Large Language Modelscited by 38
  16. 2025MoDoMoDo: Multi-Domain Data Mixtures for Multimodal LLM Reinforcement Learningcited by 29
  17. 2025Learning to Optimize Multi-Objective Alignment Through Dynamic Reward Weightingcited by 23
  18. 2025Imbalanced Gradients in RL Post-Training of Multi-Task LLMscited by 19
  19. 2024Task-Adaptive Pretrained Language Models via Clustered-Importance Samplingcited by 18
  20. 2024Mixing It Up: The Cocktail Effect of Multi-Task Fine-Tuning on LLM Performance -- A Case Study in Financecited by 15
  21. 2024CoBa: Convergence Balancer for Multitask Finetuning of Large Language Modelscited by 12
  22. 2025MedGRPO: Multi-Task Reinforcement Learning for Heterogeneous Medical Video Understandingcited by 8
  23. 2025TempR1: Improving Temporal Understanding of MLLMs via Temporal-Aware Multi-Task Reinforcement Learningcited by 7
  24. 2025MT3: Scaling MLLM-based Text Image Machine Translation via Multi-Task Reinforcement Learningcited by 5
  25. 2025GRAPE: Optimize Data Mixture for Group Robust Multi-target Adaptive Pretrainingcited by 4
  26. 2023Aurora:Activating Chinese chat capability for Mixtral-8x7B sparse Mixture-of-Experts through Instruction-Tuningcited by 3
  27. 2024BoRA: Bayesian Hierarchical Low-Rank Adaption for Multi-Task Large Language Modelscited by 1

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 12.

12 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025Multi-Layer GRPO: Enhancing Reasoning and Self-Correction in Large Language Models
  2. 2026GRPO Training Dynamics for Small Language Models
  3. 2025Can GRPO Help LLMs Transcend Their Pretraining Origin?
  4. 2025Comparative Analysis and Parametric Tuning of PPO, GRPO, and DAPO for LLM Reasoning Enhancement
  5. 2025GRPO-CARE: Consistency-Aware Reinforcement Learning for Multimodal Reasoning
  6. 2025A Minimalist Approach to LLM Reasoning: from Rejection Sampling to Reinforce
  7. 2026DIVA-GRPO: Enhancing Multimodal Reasoning through Difficulty-Adaptive Variant Advantage
  8. 2025Predictive Scaling Laws for Efficient GRPO Training of Large Reasoning Models