mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Low Light Image Enhancement Challenge at NTIRE 2026

arXiv 2604.17669 ↗First posted 19 Apr 2026cs.CVcited by 7

Not on the map. Why?

Abstract (arXiv)

This paper presents a comprehensive review of the NTIRE 2026 Low Light Image Enhancement Challenge, highlighting the proposed solutions and final results. The objective of this challenge is to identify effective networks capable of producing clearer and visually compelling images in diverse and challenging conditions by learning representative visual cues with the purpose of restoring information loss due to low-contrast and noisy images. A total of 195 participants registered for the first track and 153 for the second track of the competition, and 22 teams ultimately submitted valid entries. This paper thoroughly evaluates the state-of-the-art advances in (joint denoising and) low-light image enhancement, showcasing the significant progress in the field, while leveraging samples of our novel dataset.

Key facts. Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 54 of its 85 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 19 Apr 2026.

Builds on

54 of 85 references.

References · 54

  1. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
  2. 2014Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognitioncited by 15,267
  3. 2018The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metriccited by 11,029
  4. 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,426
  5. 2016SGDR: Stochastic Gradient Descent with Warm Restartscited by 4,993
  6. 2017Squeeze-and-Excitation Networkscited by 4,763
  7. 2022Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flowcited by 3,550
  8. 2017Outrageously Large Neural Networks: The Sparsely-Gated Mixture-of-Experts Layercited by 3,413
  9. 2016Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolutioncited by 2,678
  10. 2017FiLM: Visual Reasoning with a General Conditioning Layercited by 2,286
  11. 2021Restormer: Efficient Transformer for High-Resolution Image Restorationcited by 1,618
  12. 2016Real-Time Single Image and Video Super-Resolution Using an Efficient Sub-Pixel Convolutional Neural Networkcited by 1,199
38 more
  1. 2017Sigmoid-Weighted Linear Units for Neural Network Function Approximation in Reinforcement Learningcited by 935
  2. 2018Deep Retinex Decomposition for Low-Light Enhancementcited by 720
  3. 2022Simple Baselines for Image Restorationcited by 701
  4. 2018Learning to See in the Darkcited by 459
  5. 2024One-Step Effective Diffusion Network for Real-World Image Super-Resolutioncited by 243
  6. 2023Retinexformer: One-stage Retinex-based Transformer for Low-light Image Enhancementcited by 228
  7. 2020Focal Frequency Loss for Image Reconstruction and Synthesiscited by 204
  8. 2023Learning A Sparse Transformer Network for Effective Image Derainingcited by 204
  9. 2018Multi-level Wavelet-CNN for Image Restorationcited by 184
  10. 2022Learning Enriched Features for Fast Image Restoration and Enhancementcited by 150
  11. 2017Fast and Accurate Image Super-Resolution with Deep Laplacian Pyramid Networkscited by 138
  12. 2024Scalable High-Resolution Pixel-Space Image Synthesis with Hourglass Diffusion Transformerscited by 116
  13. 2021R2RNet: Low-light Image Enhancement via Real-low to Real-normal Networkcited by 106
  14. 2022LEDNet: Joint Low-light Enhancement and Deblurring in the Darkcited by 95
  15. 2024Restoring Images in Adverse Weather Conditions via Histogram Transformercited by 73
  16. 2024Complexity Experts are Task-Discriminative Learners for Any Image Restorationcited by 72
  17. 2021Codabench: Flexible, Easy-to-Use and Reproducible Benchmarking Platformcited by 65
  18. 2025HVI: A New Color Space for Low-light Image Enhancementcited by 62
  19. 2024DarkIR: Robust Low-Light Image Restorationcited by 48
  20. 2024Posterior-Mean Rectified Flow: Towards Minimum MSE Photo-Realistic Image Restorationcited by 32
  21. 2026The Eleventh NTIRE 2026 Efficient Super-Resolution Challenge Reportcited by 25
  22. 2026NTIRE 2026 Challenge on Robust AI-Generated Image Detection in the Wildcited by 18
  23. 2026NTIRE 2026 The 3rd Restore Any Image Model (RAIM) Challenge: Multi-Exposure Image Fusion in Dynamic Scenes (Track 2)cited by 16
  24. 2026NTIRE 2026 Challenge on Bitstream-Corrupted Video Restoration: Methods and Resultscited by 15
  25. 2026NTIRE 2026 Challenge on Single Image Reflection Removal in the Wild: Datasets, Results, and Methodscited by 15
  26. 2026NTIRE 2026 Challenge on Short-form UGC Video Restoration in the Wild with Generative Models: Datasets, Methods and Resultscited by 14
  27. 2026NTIRE 2026 The Second Challenge on Day and Night Raindrop Removal for Dual-Focused Images: Methods and Resultscited by 14
  28. 2026The Second Challenge on Real-World Face Restoration at NTIRE 2026: Methods and Resultscited by 13
  29. 2026The Second Challenge on Cross-Domain Few-Shot Object Detection at NTIRE 2026: Methods and Resultscited by 13
  30. 2026NTIRE 2026 The 3rd Restore Any Image Model (RAIM) Challenge: AI Flash Portrait (Track 3)cited by 12
  31. 2026NTIRE 2026 The 3rd Restore Any Image Model (RAIM) Challenge: Professional Image Quality Assessment (Track 1)cited by 12
  32. 2026The Fourth Challenge on Image Super-Resolution (×4) at NTIRE 2026: Benchmark Results and Method Overviewcited by 10
  33. 2026NTIRE 2026 Challenge on Video Saliency Prediction: Methods and Resultscited by 10
  34. 2025Efficient Image Restoration via Latent Consistency Flow Matchingcited by 8
  35. 2026NTIRE 2026 Rip Current Detection and Segmentation (RipDetSeg) Challenge Reportcited by 8
  36. 2025Score-based Self-supervised MRI Denoisingcited by 6
  37. 2025Towards Scale-Aware Low-Light Enhancement via Structure-Guided Transformer Designcited by 5
  38. 2025Illuminating Darkness: Learning to Enhance Low-light Images In-the-Wildcited by 3

50 most cited of 54 All 54 (JSON)

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 7.

7 papers.

  1. 2026The First Challenge on Remote Sensing Infrared Image Super-Resolution at NTIRE 2026: Benchmark Results and Method Overviewcited by 6
  2. 2026Robust Deepfake Detection, NTIRE 2026 Challenge: Reportcited by 6
  3. 2026The First Controllable Bokeh Rendering Challenge at NTIRE 2026cited by 2
  4. 2026The Third Challenge on Image Denoising at NTIRE 2026: Methods and Resultscited by 1
  5. 2026NTIRE 2026 Challenge on Efficient Low Light Image Enhancement: Methods and Resultscited by 0
  6. 2026Pixel-Space Diffusion Transformerscited by 0
  7. 2026NTIRE 2026 Low-light Enhancement: Twilight Cowboy Challengecited by 0