@inproceedings{wu-etal-2026-table,
title = "Table-R1: Region-based Reinforcement Learning for Table Understanding",
author = "Wu, Zhenhe and
Yang, Jian and
He, Zhongjiang and
Pan, Changzai and
Liu, Jiaheng and
Wu, Xianjie and
Zhao, Yu and
Song, Shuangyong and
Li, Yongxiang and
Li, Zhoujun and
Li, Xuelong",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {ACL} 2026",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.1364/",
pages = "27374--27391",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-395-1",
abstract = "Tables present unique challenges for language models due to their structured row-column interactions, necessitating specialized approaches for effective comprehension. While large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated potential in table reasoning through prompting and techniques like chain-of-thought (CoT) and program-of-thought (PoT), optimizing their performance for table question answering remains underexplored. In this paper, we introduce region-based Table-R1, a novel reinforcement learning approach that enhances LLM table understanding by integrating region evidence into reasoning steps. Our method employs Region-Enhanced Supervised Fine-Tuning (RE-SFT) to guide models in identifying relevant table regions before generating answers, incorporating textual, symbolic, and program-based reasoning. Additionally, Table-Aware Group Relative Policy Optimization (TARPO) introduces a mixed reward system to dynamically balance region accuracy and answer correctness, with decaying region rewards and consistency penalties to align reasoning steps. Experiments show that Table-R1 achieves an average performance improvement of 14.36 points across multiple base models on three benchmark datasets, even outperforming baseline models with ten times the number of parameters, while TARPO significantly reduces the reasoning token consumption by 67.5{\%} compared to GRPO, significantly advancing LLM capabilities in efficient tabular reasoning."
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<abstract>Tables present unique challenges for language models due to their structured row-column interactions, necessitating specialized approaches for effective comprehension. While large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated potential in table reasoning through prompting and techniques like chain-of-thought (CoT) and program-of-thought (PoT), optimizing their performance for table question answering remains underexplored. In this paper, we introduce region-based Table-R1, a novel reinforcement learning approach that enhances LLM table understanding by integrating region evidence into reasoning steps. Our method employs Region-Enhanced Supervised Fine-Tuning (RE-SFT) to guide models in identifying relevant table regions before generating answers, incorporating textual, symbolic, and program-based reasoning. Additionally, Table-Aware Group Relative Policy Optimization (TARPO) introduces a mixed reward system to dynamically balance region accuracy and answer correctness, with decaying region rewards and consistency penalties to align reasoning steps. Experiments show that Table-R1 achieves an average performance improvement of 14.36 points across multiple base models on three benchmark datasets, even outperforming baseline models with ten times the number of parameters, while TARPO significantly reduces the reasoning token consumption by 67.5% compared to GRPO, significantly advancing LLM capabilities in efficient tabular reasoning.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Table-R1: Region-based Reinforcement Learning for Table Understanding
%A Wu, Zhenhe
%A Yang, Jian
%A He, Zhongjiang
%A Pan, Changzai
%A Liu, Jiaheng
%A Wu, Xianjie
%A Zhao, Yu
%A Song, Shuangyong
%A Li, Yongxiang
%A Li, Zhoujun
%A Li, Xuelong
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-395-1
%F wu-etal-2026-table
%X Tables present unique challenges for language models due to their structured row-column interactions, necessitating specialized approaches for effective comprehension. While large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated potential in table reasoning through prompting and techniques like chain-of-thought (CoT) and program-of-thought (PoT), optimizing their performance for table question answering remains underexplored. In this paper, we introduce region-based Table-R1, a novel reinforcement learning approach that enhances LLM table understanding by integrating region evidence into reasoning steps. Our method employs Region-Enhanced Supervised Fine-Tuning (RE-SFT) to guide models in identifying relevant table regions before generating answers, incorporating textual, symbolic, and program-based reasoning. Additionally, Table-Aware Group Relative Policy Optimization (TARPO) introduces a mixed reward system to dynamically balance region accuracy and answer correctness, with decaying region rewards and consistency penalties to align reasoning steps. Experiments show that Table-R1 achieves an average performance improvement of 14.36 points across multiple base models on three benchmark datasets, even outperforming baseline models with ten times the number of parameters, while TARPO significantly reduces the reasoning token consumption by 67.5% compared to GRPO, significantly advancing LLM capabilities in efficient tabular reasoning.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.1364/
%P 27374-27391
Markdown (Informal)
[Table-R1: Region-based Reinforcement Learning for Table Understanding](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.1364/) (Wu et al., Findings 2026)
ACL
- Zhenhe Wu, Jian Yang, Zhongjiang He, Changzai Pan, Jiaheng Liu, Xianjie Wu, Yu Zhao, Shuangyong Song, Yongxiang Li, Zhoujun Li, and Xuelong Li. 2026. Table-R1: Region-based Reinforcement Learning for Table Understanding. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026, pages 27374–27391, San Diego, California, United States. Association for Computational Linguistics.