Spatial Reasoning in Language Models

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53 papers9 papers in the last four weeks, up 50% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

FlowBench: Counterfactual Imagination Training for Spatial Intelligence
Nov 2, 2026Yifan Liu, Baihan Zhang, Khai Loong Aw +2Spatial Reasoning in Language Models Reasoning for VLMs
Stanford University
Structured Maps for Landmark-Based Route Instructions with LLMs
Oct 27, 2026Mifu Matsumoto, Yuki Nakanishi, Tomoya Hashiguchi +1Spatial Reasoning in Language Models
University of Hyogo, Hyogo, Japan
SpatialBrain: Spatial Intelligence Growing from Experience
Oct 21, 2026Yifan Zhou, Ziyang Gong, Xiaojun Ye +5Spatial Reasoning in Language Models Spatial Reasoning
Shanghai Jiao Tong University · Zhejiang University
S-Agent 2.0: Spatial Reasoning with a General Coding Agent
Oct 20, 2026Rui Gong, Ruoyu Wang, Yalun Dai +9Spatial Reasoning in Language Models 3D Spatial Reasoning
Nanyang Technological University · University of Hong Kong
GeoReason: Bridging Logical Reasoning and Spatial Fidelity in Remote Sensing Segmentation
Oct 16, 2026Cheng Fan, Han Wu, Tingzhang Luo +3Reasoning Segmentation Remote Sensing Image Segmentation
City University of Hong Kong · School of Computer Science, Peking University · Samsung
MJev-Spatial: System One Spatial Intelligence via Native Attention Matching
Oct 15, 2026Luozheng Qin, Yuhan Zhu, Changhai Zhou +10Spatial Reasoning in Language Models Visual Spatial Reasoning
S-Space: Exploring Spatial Workspace in Multimodal Language Models
Oct 9, 2026Zhiyuan Shi, Xiang Li, Xingzhuo Guo +8Spatial Reasoning in Language Models Spatial Reasoning
SpaceCast-Bench: Evaluating Predictive Spatial Reasoning in Vision-Language Models
Oct 8, 2026Hongxing Li, Jinyue Su, Dingming Li +5Spatial Reasoning Spatial Reasoning Benchmarks
Zhejiang University
SpatialOPSD: Self-Distilling Spatial Intelligence from Verified Coding Agent Traces
Oct 8, 2026Rongxue Li, Meng Yang, Yiru Mao +6Spatial Reasoning in Language Models VLM Reasoning
Alibaba Group
SpatialChain: A Benchmark for Auditing Spatial Reasoning Faithfulness in VLMs
Oct 5, 2026Rafael Teixeira Sousa, Vinícius Paulo Lopes de Oliveira, Elisa Ayumi Masasi de Oliveira +5VLM Evaluation Spatial Reasoning Benchmarks
Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso (UFMT) · Universidade Federal de Goiás (UFG) · Advanced Knowledge Center for Immersive Technologies (AKCIT)
KilometerVision: A New Frontier for Large-Scale Spatial Intelligence in VLMs
Sep 30, 2026Aravindh Mahendran, Michael King, Matthew Koichi Grimes +12Spatial Reasoning Benchmarks Visual Spatial Reasoning
Google DeepMind, Berlin, Germany · Google DeepMind, London, UK · Princeton University, Princeton, USA +3
Soft Spatial Reasoning
Sep 30, 2026Rafi Ibn Sultan, Md. Sajid Alam Chowdhury, Saleh Zare Zade +4Visual Spatial Reasoning VLM Reasoning
Department of Computer Science, Wayne State University · Department of Radiation Oncology, Henry Ford Health · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The Ohio State University +1
SpatialCORE: Confidence-Aware Grounded Spatial Reasoning in Large Vision--Language Models
Sep 30, 2026Rafi Ibn Sultan, Xiangyu Zhou, Md. Sajid Alam Chowdhury +4Visual Spatial Reasoning Large Vision-Language Models
Department of Computer Science, Wayne State University · Department of Radiation Oncology, Henry Ford Health · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The Ohio State University +1
Who Is Left of Whom? Tracing Spatial Evidence and Role Binding in Relative-Position Reasoning
Sep 28, 2026Yingjin Song, Denis Paperno, Albert GattVLM Interpretability Spatial Reasoning
Utrecht University Utrecht, The Netherlands
SpatialSkill: Self-Evolving Skills for Cross-View Spatial Reasoning
Sep 28, 2026Ruifan Zuo, Guocheng Hu, Wanshui Gan +3Visual Spatial Reasoning VLM Reasoning
Shandong University · Shanghai AI Laboratory · Zhiyang Innovation Co., Ltd.
SpatialSpeak: QA-Native Reconstruction with Local and Global Context for Spatial Chain-of-Thought Reasoning
Sep 27, 2026Yang Cao, Jiaxin Zhang, Dave Zhenyu Chen +4Visual Spatial Reasoning Multi-View 3D Reconstruction
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · Harbin Institute of Technology · Huawei Noah’s Ark Lab
Autoregressive Mosaics: Probing 2D Spatial Reasoning in Text-Only Language Models
Aug 31, 2026Ashwin Nedungadi, Stefan Oehmcke, Stefan LüdtkeSpatial Reasoning Benchmarks Spatial Reasoning in Language Models
Institute for Visual & Analytic Computing (VAC), University of Rostock
Grounding Isn't Knowing: Do VLMs Need Object Localization for Spatial Reasoning?
Aug 24, 2026Xiwei Liu, Yulong Li, Xinlin Zhuang +5Visual Spatial Reasoning Spatial Reasoning in Language Models
Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence · The Chinese University of Hong Kong · University Of Liverpool
Trace, Verify, and Correct: A Training-Free Framework for Spatial Reasoning in Multimodal LLMs
Aug 5, 2026Yang Yang, Jiawei Chen, Tairan Chen +1Multimodal Grounding Visual Spatial Reasoning
Shanghai Key Laboratory of Multidimensional Information Processing, East China Normal University · Zhongguancun Academy · Stevens Institute of Technology
MultiGlobeQA: A Multilingual and Globally Diverse Benchmark for Geospatial Reasoning
Aug 4, 2026Martin Böckling, Elizaveta Nosova, Heiko Paulheim +1Spatial Reasoning Multilingual QA
Data and Web Science Group, University of Mannheim, Germany
SpatioLM: Towards General Physical Spatial Intelligence in Vision-Language Models
Aug 3, 2026Jing Wu, Jianhua Wu, Jiayi Guan +5Vision-Language Models Visual Spatial Reasoning
Xiaomi EV, Beijing, China · College of Automotive and Energy Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China · Independent Researcher
Spatial-IQ: Deconstructing Spatial Intelligence via Hierarchical Capability Tests
Jul 24, 2026Patrick Rim, Tom Long, Ekta Prashnani +63D Spatial Reasoning Visual Spatial Reasoning
1NVIDIA Research · 2Yale University
Spatial Reasoning in LLM Game Agents: Impact of Causal Context and Multi-Step Planning
Jul 22, 2026Mohit Jiwatode, Ronja Fuchs, Robin Schmöcker +2Game-Playing Agents Spatial Reasoning in Language Models
Institute for Information Processing · SDU Metaverse Lab
LenGuard-GPC: Length Guarding with Guided-Prompt Consistency for Spatial Reasoning Reinforcement Learning
Jul 19, 2026Xingjian Tao, Yiwei Wang, Yujun Cai +2Visual Spatial Reasoning Reward Shaping
HKUST(GZ) · UC Merced · University of Queensland +1
Evaluation of Multilingual Ability to Use Spatial Deictic Expressions in Vision-Language Models
Jul 8, 2026Kaito Watanabe, Taisei Yamamoto, Tomoki Doi +1Visual Spatial Reasoning Multilingual VLM Evaluation
The University of Tokyo · Riken · Tohoku University
Spatial Reasoning via Modality Switching Between Language and Symbolic Representations
Jun 30, 2026Shreya Rajpal, Tanawan Premsri, Parisa KordjamshidiMultimodal Reasoning Spatial Reasoning
Department of Computer Science and Engineering Michigan State University Michigan, USA
Graph-Enhanced Large Language Models for Spatial Search
Jun 22, 2026Nicole R. Schneider, Kent O'Sullivan, Hanan SametLLM Reasoning with Graphs Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation
University of Maryland College Park, USA · University of Sydney Sydney, Australia
CoCoSI: Collaborative Cognitive Map Construction for Spatial Intelligence
Jun 9, 2026Yiming Zhang, Ruoxuan Cao, Zhihang ZhongMultimodal Understanding Multimodal Large Language Models
2Cornell University · 1Shanghai Jiao Tong University
From Symbolic to Geometric: Enabling Spatial Reasoning in Large Language Models
Jun 3, 2026Chen Chu, Bita Azarijoo, Li Xiong +2Spatial Reasoning Benchmarks Multimodal Large Language Models
University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA, USA · Emory University Atlanta, GA, USA · Novateur Research Solutions Ashburn, Virginia, USA
Imaginative Perception Tokens Enhance Spatial Reasoning in Multimodal Language Models
Jun 2, 2026Mahtab Bigverdi, Linjie Li, Weikai Huang +8Multimodal Understanding Spatial Reasoning
University of Washington · 2Allen Institute for AI · 3Microsoft +1

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FlowBench: Counterfactual Imagination Training for Spatial Intelligence

Yifan Liu, Baihan Zhang, Khai Loong Aw, Klemen Kotar+1

Stanford University

Spatial Reasoning in Language Models Reasoning for VLMs

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Humans imagine scene changes under hypothetical motions, an ability central to spatial reasoning and robotic planning. However, this capability remains underexplored in vision-language models and world models. We formalize this capability as Counterfactual Spatial Imagination (CSI) and introduce FlowBench, a resource for training and evaluating both, with 428K training examples spanning simulated and real-world scenes, household environments and tabletop manipulation, and diverse question types. A scalable, fully automatic pipeline pairs each hypothetical motion with spatial questions and, in simulation, exact outcome frames and optical flow. For VLMs, proprietary models exhibit an imagination gap, performing worse when motion outcomes must be inferred than when observed, and open-source models perform near chance; fine-tuning Qwen3-VL-8B on FlowBench-Sim-Train raises its accuracy by 29.5 percentage points in simulation and 16.9 on real images, a strong sim-to-real transfer. For world models, training on FlowBench-Sim improves text-to-flow prediction for all four model families we test, raising the accuracy of Psi-0.6 from 52.1% to 61.7%. FlowBench thus serves as a training and evaluation resource for both. Code and datasets are released at https://github.com/liuyifan22/FlowBench.