Jais 2: A Family of Arabic-Centric Open Large Language Models
Mohamed Anwar, Abed Alhakim Freihat, George Ibrahim, Mostafa Awad, Abdelrahman Sadallah, Gurpreet Gosal, Gokulakrishnan Ramakrishnan, Sarath Chandran, Biswajit Mishra, Rituraj Joshi, Ahmed Frikha, Etienne Goffinet, Abhishek Maiti, Ali El Filali, Sarah AlBarri, Samujjwal Ghosh, Rahul Pal, Parvez Mullah, Awantika Shukla, Sajid Siddiki, Samta Kamboj, Onkar Pandit, Sunil Kumar Sahu, AbdelRahman Elbadawy, Amr Mohamed, Ahmad Chamma, Evan Dufraisse, Abdelaziz Bounhar, Dani Bouch, Hadi Abdine, Guokan Shang, Fajri Koto, Yuxia Wang, Zhuohan Xie, Ali Mekky, Rania Elbadry, Sarfraz Ahmad, Momina Ahsan, Omar El Herraoui, Daniil Orel, Hasan Iqbal, Kareem Elzeky, Mervat Abassy, Kareem Elozeiri, Saadeldine Eletter, Farah Atif, Nurdaulet Mukhituly, Haonan Li, Xudong Han, Aaryamonvikram Singh, Zainul Abedien Ahmed Quraishi, Neha Sengupta, Larry Murray, Avraham Sheinin, Joel Hestness, Natalia Vassilieva, Hector Xuguang Ren, Zhengzhong Liu, Michalis Vazirgiannis, Preslav Nakov
Correct Metadata for
Abstract
Jais 2 is a family of open-weight, Arabic-centric large language models designed for strong Arabic performance and broad cultural coverage. The family includes, to our knowledge, the largest open Arabic-centric LLM trained from scratch, with 70B parameters, alongside an efficient 8B model. A custom Arabic-centric vocabulary supports efficient training and inference, while an optimized architecture and training recipe improve compute efficiency. Jais 2 achieves the highest scores on the Open Arabic LLM Leaderboard v2 (OALL2) and AraGen v1 among the evaluated open models, while remaining competitive on English benchmarks. It also obtains strong results in Arabic poetry, dream interpretation, translation, and summarization. On the IslamicQA domain, Jais 2-70B achieves the second-highest overall average among the evaluated large open models, while attaining the highest scores on PalmX and the held-out in-house IslamicQA benchmark. We release both model sizes as open-weights on Hugging Face under a commercially permissive license. Jais 2-70B is also available as a chat application on the Web, iOS, and Android, reaching inference speeds of up to 2,000 tokens per second on Cerebras hardware.- Anthology ID:
- 2026.emnlp-main.657
- Volume:
- Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
- Month:
- October
- Year:
- 2026
- Address:
- Budapest, Hungary
- Editors:
- Hung-Yi Lee, Sunipa Dev, Jessy Li, Desmond Elliott
- Venue:
- EMNLP
- SIG:
- SIGDAT
- Publisher:
- Association for Computational Linguistics
- Note:
- Pages:
- 15090–15151
- Language:
- URL:
- https://aclanthology.org/2026.emnlp-main.657/
- DOI:
- Bibkey:
- Cite (ACL):
- Mohamed Anwar, Abed Alhakim Freihat, George Ibrahim, Mostafa Awad, Abdelrahman Sadallah, Gurpreet Gosal, Gokulakrishnan Ramakrishnan, Sarath Chandran, Biswajit Mishra, Rituraj Joshi, Ahmed Frikha, Etienne Goffinet, Abhishek Maiti, Ali El Filali, Sarah AlBarri, Samujjwal Ghosh, Rahul Pal, Parvez Mullah, Awantika Shukla, Sajid Siddiki, Samta Kamboj, Onkar Pandit, Sunil Kumar Sahu, AbdelRahman Elbadawy, Amr Mohamed, Ahmad Chamma, Evan Dufraisse, Abdelaziz Bounhar, Dani Bouch, Hadi Abdine, Guokan Shang, Fajri Koto, Yuxia Wang, Zhuohan Xie, Ali Mekky, Rania Elbadry, Sarfraz Ahmad, Momina Ahsan, Omar El Herraoui, Daniil Orel, Hasan Iqbal, Kareem Elzeky, Mervat Abassy, Kareem Elozeiri, Saadeldine Eletter, Farah Atif, Nurdaulet Mukhituly, Haonan Li, Xudong Han, Aaryamonvikram Singh, Zainul Abedien Ahmed Quraishi, Neha Sengupta, Larry Murray, Avraham Sheinin, Joel Hestness, Natalia Vassilieva, Hector Xuguang Ren, Zhengzhong Liu, Michalis Vazirgiannis, and Preslav Nakov. 2026. Jais 2: A Family of Arabic-Centric Open Large Language Models. In Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, pages 15090–15151, Budapest, Hungary. Association for Computational Linguistics.
- Cite (Informal):
- Jais 2: A Family of Arabic-Centric Open Large Language Models (Anwar et al., EMNLP 2026)
- Copy Citation:
- PDF:
- https://aclanthology.org/2026.emnlp-main.657.pdf
Export citation
@inproceedings{anwar-etal-2026-jais,
title = "Jais 2: A Family of {A}rabic-Centric Open Large Language Models",
author = "Anwar, Mohamed and
Freihat, Abed Alhakim and
Ibrahim, George and
Awad, Mostafa and
Sadallah, Abdelrahman and
Gosal, Gurpreet and
Ramakrishnan, Gokulakrishnan and
Chandran, Sarath and
Mishra, Biswajit and
Joshi, Rituraj and
Frikha, Ahmed and
Goffinet, Etienne and
Maiti, Abhishek and
El Filali, Ali and
AlBarri, Sarah and
Ghosh, Samujjwal and
Pal, Rahul and
Mullah, Parvez and
Shukla, Awantika and
Siddiki, Sajid and
Kamboj, Samta and
Pandit, Onkar and
Sahu, Sunil Kumar and
Elbadawy, AbdelRahman and
Mohamed, Amr and
Chamma, Ahmad and
Dufraisse, Evan and
Bounhar, Abdelaziz and
Bouch, Dani and
Abdine, Hadi and
Shang, Guokan and
Koto, Fajri and
Wang, Yuxia and
Xie, Zhuohan and
Mekky, Ali and
Elbadry, Rania and
Ahmad, Sarfraz and
Ahsan, Momina and
El Herraoui, Omar and
Orel, Daniil and
Iqbal, Hasan and
Elzeky, Kareem and
Abassy, Mervat and
Elozeiri, Kareem and
Eletter, Saadeldine and
Atif, Farah and
Mukhituly, Nurdaulet and
Li, Haonan and
Han, Xudong and
Singh, Aaryamonvikram and
Quraishi, Zainul Abedien Ahmed and
Sengupta, Neha and
Murray, Larry and
Sheinin, Avraham and
Hestness, Joel and
Vassilieva, Natalia and
Ren, Hector Xuguang and
Liu, Zhengzhong and
Vazirgiannis, Michalis and
Nakov, Preslav",
editor = "Lee, Hung-Yi and
Dev, Sunipa and
Li, Jessy and
Elliott, Desmond",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing",
month = oct,
year = "2026",
address = "Budapest, Hungary",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.emnlp-main.657/",
pages = "15090--15151",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-459-0",
abstract = "Jais 2 is a family of open-weight, Arabic-centric large language models designed for strong Arabic performance and broad cultural coverage. The family includes, to our knowledge, the largest open Arabic-centric LLM trained from scratch, with 70B parameters, alongside an efficient 8B model. A custom Arabic-centric vocabulary supports efficient training and inference, while an optimized architecture and training recipe improve compute efficiency. Jais 2 achieves the highest scores on the Open Arabic LLM Leaderboard v2 (OALL2) and AraGen v1 among the evaluated open models, while remaining competitive on English benchmarks. It also obtains strong results in Arabic poetry, dream interpretation, translation, and summarization. On the IslamicQA domain, Jais 2-70B achieves the second-highest overall average among the evaluated large open models, while attaining the highest scores on PalmX and the held-out in-house IslamicQA benchmark. We release both model sizes as open-weights on Hugging Face under a commercially permissive license. Jais 2-70B is also available as a chat application on the Web, iOS, and Android, reaching inference speeds of up to 2,000 tokens per second on Cerebras hardware."
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<abstract>Jais 2 is a family of open-weight, Arabic-centric large language models designed for strong Arabic performance and broad cultural coverage. The family includes, to our knowledge, the largest open Arabic-centric LLM trained from scratch, with 70B parameters, alongside an efficient 8B model. A custom Arabic-centric vocabulary supports efficient training and inference, while an optimized architecture and training recipe improve compute efficiency. Jais 2 achieves the highest scores on the Open Arabic LLM Leaderboard v2 (OALL2) and AraGen v1 among the evaluated open models, while remaining competitive on English benchmarks. It also obtains strong results in Arabic poetry, dream interpretation, translation, and summarization. On the IslamicQA domain, Jais 2-70B achieves the second-highest overall average among the evaluated large open models, while attaining the highest scores on PalmX and the held-out in-house IslamicQA benchmark. We release both model sizes as open-weights on Hugging Face under a commercially permissive license. Jais 2-70B is also available as a chat application on the Web, iOS, and Android, reaching inference speeds of up to 2,000 tokens per second on Cerebras hardware.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings %T Jais 2: A Family of Arabic-Centric Open Large Language Models %A Anwar, Mohamed %A Freihat, Abed Alhakim %A Ibrahim, George %A Awad, Mostafa %A Sadallah, Abdelrahman %A Gosal, Gurpreet %A Ramakrishnan, Gokulakrishnan %A Chandran, Sarath %A Mishra, Biswajit %A Joshi, Rituraj %A Frikha, Ahmed %A Goffinet, Etienne %A Maiti, Abhishek %A El Filali, Ali %A AlBarri, Sarah %A Ghosh, Samujjwal %A Pal, Rahul %A Mullah, Parvez %A Shukla, Awantika %A Siddiki, Sajid %A Kamboj, Samta %A Pandit, Onkar %A Sahu, Sunil Kumar %A Elbadawy, AbdelRahman %A Mohamed, Amr %A Chamma, Ahmad %A Dufraisse, Evan %A Bounhar, Abdelaziz %A Bouch, Dani %A Abdine, Hadi %A Shang, Guokan %A Koto, Fajri %A Wang, Yuxia %A Xie, Zhuohan %A Mekky, Ali %A Elbadry, Rania %A Ahmad, Sarfraz %A Ahsan, Momina %A El Herraoui, Omar %A Orel, Daniil %A Iqbal, Hasan %A Elzeky, Kareem %A Abassy, Mervat %A Elozeiri, Kareem %A Eletter, Saadeldine %A Atif, Farah %A Mukhituly, Nurdaulet %A Li, Haonan %A Han, Xudong %A Singh, Aaryamonvikram %A Quraishi, Zainul Abedien Ahmed %A Sengupta, Neha %A Murray, Larry %A Sheinin, Avraham %A Hestness, Joel %A Vassilieva, Natalia %A Ren, Hector Xuguang %A Liu, Zhengzhong %A Vazirgiannis, Michalis %A Nakov, Preslav %Y Lee, Hung-Yi %Y Dev, Sunipa %Y Li, Jessy %Y Elliott, Desmond %S Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing %D 2026 %8 October %I Association for Computational Linguistics %C Budapest, Hungary %@ 979-8-89176-459-0 %F anwar-etal-2026-jais %X Jais 2 is a family of open-weight, Arabic-centric large language models designed for strong Arabic performance and broad cultural coverage. The family includes, to our knowledge, the largest open Arabic-centric LLM trained from scratch, with 70B parameters, alongside an efficient 8B model. A custom Arabic-centric vocabulary supports efficient training and inference, while an optimized architecture and training recipe improve compute efficiency. Jais 2 achieves the highest scores on the Open Arabic LLM Leaderboard v2 (OALL2) and AraGen v1 among the evaluated open models, while remaining competitive on English benchmarks. It also obtains strong results in Arabic poetry, dream interpretation, translation, and summarization. On the IslamicQA domain, Jais 2-70B achieves the second-highest overall average among the evaluated large open models, while attaining the highest scores on PalmX and the held-out in-house IslamicQA benchmark. We release both model sizes as open-weights on Hugging Face under a commercially permissive license. Jais 2-70B is also available as a chat application on the Web, iOS, and Android, reaching inference speeds of up to 2,000 tokens per second on Cerebras hardware. %U https://aclanthology.org/2026.emnlp-main.657/ %P 15090-15151
Markdown (Informal)
[Jais 2: A Family of Arabic-Centric Open Large Language Models](https://aclanthology.org/2026.emnlp-main.657/) (Anwar et al., EMNLP 2026)
- Jais 2: A Family of Arabic-Centric Open Large Language Models (Anwar et al., EMNLP 2026)
ACL
- Mohamed Anwar, Abed Alhakim Freihat, George Ibrahim, Mostafa Awad, Abdelrahman Sadallah, Gurpreet Gosal, Gokulakrishnan Ramakrishnan, Sarath Chandran, Biswajit Mishra, Rituraj Joshi, Ahmed Frikha, Etienne Goffinet, Abhishek Maiti, Ali El Filali, Sarah AlBarri, Samujjwal Ghosh, Rahul Pal, Parvez Mullah, Awantika Shukla, Sajid Siddiki, Samta Kamboj, Onkar Pandit, Sunil Kumar Sahu, AbdelRahman Elbadawy, Amr Mohamed, Ahmad Chamma, Evan Dufraisse, Abdelaziz Bounhar, Dani Bouch, Hadi Abdine, Guokan Shang, Fajri Koto, Yuxia Wang, Zhuohan Xie, Ali Mekky, Rania Elbadry, Sarfraz Ahmad, Momina Ahsan, Omar El Herraoui, Daniil Orel, Hasan Iqbal, Kareem Elzeky, Mervat Abassy, Kareem Elozeiri, Saadeldine Eletter, Farah Atif, Nurdaulet Mukhituly, Haonan Li, Xudong Han, Aaryamonvikram Singh, Zainul Abedien Ahmed Quraishi, Neha Sengupta, Larry Murray, Avraham Sheinin, Joel Hestness, Natalia Vassilieva, Hector Xuguang Ren, Zhengzhong Liu, Michalis Vazirgiannis, and Preslav Nakov. 2026. Jais 2: A Family of Arabic-Centric Open Large Language Models. In Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, pages 15090–15151, Budapest, Hungary. Association for Computational Linguistics.