A world model is a deep neural network system that learns to internally represent and simulate how the world works including its physical dynamics, objects, agents, and causal relationships so that it can predict how environments evolve and how actions will affect them. Instead of passively recognizing patterns, a world model builds an active understanding of change, enabling it to generate, imagine, and interact with coherent virtual worlds over time.
Checkout the following resources that maintain more exhaustive list on world models research:
- LMD0311/Awesome-World-Model
- leofan90/Awesome-World-Models
- knightnemo/Awesome-World-Models
- Li-Zn-H/AwesomeWorldModels
- gracezhao1997/Awesome-Video-World-Models-with-AR-Diffusion
@bilawalsidhu's YouTube channel covers a lot about the landscape of world models and how technology is evolving.
The following is a curated list of research, projects, and works related to the development of world models.
| Title | Date | Links |
|---|---|---|
| MultiGen: Level-Design for Editable Multiplayer Worlds in Diffusion Game Engines | 6th March 2026 | arXiv Blog Tweet |
| LATENT PARTICLE WORLD MODELS: SELFSUPERVISED OBJECT-CENTRIC STOCHASTIC DYNAMICS MODELING | 4th March 2026 | arXiv Tweet Code |
| Interactive World Simulator for Robot Policy Training and Evaluation | 6th March 2026 | Website Tweet arXiv |
| Beyond Pixel Histories: World Models with Persistent 3D State | 3rd March 2026 | arXiv Website |
| Solaris: Building a Multiplayer Video World Model in Minecraft | 26th Feb 2026 | arXiv Github Blog |
| Self-Improving World Modelling with Latent Actions | 15th Feb 2026 | arXiv Github |
| Waymo World Model (Built on Genie 3) | 6th Feb 2026 | Blog |
| Visuo-Tactile Wold Models | 5th Feb 2026 | arXiv Blog Post |
| Infinite-World: Scaling Interactive World Models to 1000-Frame Horizons via Pose-Free Hierarchical Memory | 3rd Feb 2026 | arXiv Github |
| Advancing Open-source World Models | 28th Jan 2026 | arXiv Github |
| Astra : General Interactive World Model With Autoregressive Denoising | 27th Jan 2026 | arXiv Github |
| HY-World 1.5: A Systematic Framework for Interactive World Modeling with Real-Time Latency and Geometric Consistency | 17th December 2025 | arXiv Github |
| SimWorld: An Open-ended Realistic Simulator for Autonomous Agents in Physical and Social Worlds | Around December 2025 | Report Github |
| World Models That Know When They Don’t Know: Controllable Video Generation with Calibrated Uncertainty | 5th December 2025 | arXiv Github |
| WorldScore: A Unified Evaluation Benchmark for World Generation | 29th Nov 2025 | arXiv |
| Infinity-RoPE: Action-Controllable Infinite Video Generation Emerges From Autoregressive Self-Rollout | 25th Nov 2025 | arXiv Blog |
| GigaWorld-0: World Models as Data Engine to Empower Embodied AI | 25th Nov 2025 | arXiv |
| RynnVLA-002: A Unified Vision-Language-Action and World Model | 21st Nov 2025 | arXiv Github |
| PAN: A World Model for General, Interactable, and Long-Horizon World Simulation | 13th Nov 2025 | arXiv |
| SIMA 2: An Agent that Plays, Reasons, and Learns With You in Virtual 3D Worlds | 13th Nov 2025 | Blog Report |
| Marble: A Multimodal World Model | 12th Nov 2025 | Blog |
| Robot Learning from a Physical World Model | 10th Nov 2025 | arXiv Github |
| Emu3.5: Native Multimodal Models are World Learners | 30th Oct 2025 | Report Github |
| RLVR-World: Training World Models with Reinforcement Learning | 25th Oct 2025 | arXiv Github |
| World-in-World: World Models in a Closed-Loop World | 20th Oct 2025 | arXiv Github |
| CTRL-WORLD: A CONTROLLABLE GENERATIVE WORLD MODEL FOR ROBOT MANIPULATION | 15th Oct 2025 | arXiv Github |
| WORLDGYM: WORLD MODEL AS AN ENVIRONMENT FOR POLICY EVALUATION | 30th Sep 2025 | arXiv Github |
| Training Agents Inside of Scalable World Models | 29th Sep 2025 | arXiv Blog |
| Video models are zero-shot learners and reasoners | 29th Sep 2025 | arXiv Blog Post |
| CAN AI PERCEIVE PHYSICAL DANGER AND INTERVENE? | 23rd Sep 2025 | arXiv Blog |
| Matrix-Game 2.0: An Open-Source, Real-Time, and Streaming Interactive World Model | 18 August 2025 | arXiv GitHub |
| Genie 3: A new frontier for world models | 5 August 2025 | Blog Post |
| YUME: An Interactive World Generation Model | 23 July 2025 | arXiv GitHub |
| Cosmos: World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AI | 9 July 2025 | arXiv |
| Matrix-Game: Interactive World Foundation Model | 23 June 2025 | arXiv |
| Hunyuan-GameCraft: High-dynamic Interactive Game Video Generation with Hybrid History Condition | 20 June 2025 | Project Page arXiv |
| V-JEPA 2: Self-Supervised Video Models Enable Understanding, Prediction and Planning | 11 June 2025 | arXiv Blog Post |
| Long-Context State-Space Video World Models | 26 May 2025 | arXiv |
| Do generative video models understand physical principles? | 27th February 2025 | arXiv |
| Genie 2: A large-scale foundation world model | 4 December 2024 | Blog Post |
| Oasis: A Universe in a Transformer | 31 October 2024 | Project Page GitHub |
| Diffusion for World Modeling: Visual Details Matter in Atari | 30 October 2024 | arXiv |
| A generalist AI agent for 3D virtual environments (SIMA) | 13 March 2024 | Blog Post arXiv |
| Genie: Generative Interactive Environments | 23 February 2024 | Publication arXiv |
| Video generation models as world simulators (Sora) | 15 February 2024 | Blog Post |
Also checkout Magica 2 by Dynamics lab. It is similar to Genie 3, however unable to find much more information.
The following are organizations actively involved in the development of world models
Talks, Blogs & Podcasts
- Jim Fan on Nvidia's Roadmap for Embodied AI
- From Words to Worlds: Spatial Intelligence is AI’s Next Frontier
- What is world model? (Deepmind)
Feel free to open a PR and contribute!
Join the discussion at r/world_model on Reddit.