@inproceedings{jia-etal-2026-balancerag,
title = "{B}alance{RAG}: Joint Risk Calibration for Cascaded Retrieval-Augmented Generation",
author = "Jia, Zijun and
Ye, Yuanchang and
Jia, Sen and
Qian, Yiyao and
Wang, Haoning and
Chen, Baojie and
Tang, Diyin and
Yu, Jinsong and
Wang, Zhiyuan",
editor = "Lee, Hung-Yi and
Dev, Sunipa and
Li, Jessy and
Elliott, Desmond",
booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {EMNLP} 2026",
month = oct,
year = "2026",
address = "Budapest, Hungary",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.1391/",
pages = "29581--29609",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-462-0",
abstract = "Large language models (LLMs) can enhance factuality via retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), but applying RAG to every query is unnecessary when the model-only answer is reliable. This motivates cascaded RAG: each query is first handled by an LLM-only branch, escalated to a RAG fallback only if the primary branch is uncertain, and abstained from when neither branch is sufficiently trustworthy. However, calibrating such cascades stage by stage may be conservative, since the final utility depends on joint uncertainty thresholding of LLM-only and RAG. In this work, we develop **BalanceRAG** to certify threshold pairs at a target risk level. Given uncertainty scores from the two branches, BalanceRAG frames each threshold pair as an operating point on a two-dimensional lattice and identifies safe operating points using sequential graphical testing. This enables risk-adaptive threshold calibration, controlling the system-level error rate among accepted points, while retaining more examples. Furthermore, BalanceRAG extends to multi-risk calibration, allowing retrieval usage to be bounded together with the selection-conditioned risk. Experiments on three open-domain question answering (QA) benchmarks across multiple LLM backbones demonstrate that BalanceRAG meets prescribed risk levels, preserves higher coverage and more accepted correct examples, and reduces unnecessary retrieval calls compared with always-on RAG."
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<abstract>Large language models (LLMs) can enhance factuality via retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), but applying RAG to every query is unnecessary when the model-only answer is reliable. This motivates cascaded RAG: each query is first handled by an LLM-only branch, escalated to a RAG fallback only if the primary branch is uncertain, and abstained from when neither branch is sufficiently trustworthy. However, calibrating such cascades stage by stage may be conservative, since the final utility depends on joint uncertainty thresholding of LLM-only and RAG. In this work, we develop **BalanceRAG** to certify threshold pairs at a target risk level. Given uncertainty scores from the two branches, BalanceRAG frames each threshold pair as an operating point on a two-dimensional lattice and identifies safe operating points using sequential graphical testing. This enables risk-adaptive threshold calibration, controlling the system-level error rate among accepted points, while retaining more examples. Furthermore, BalanceRAG extends to multi-risk calibration, allowing retrieval usage to be bounded together with the selection-conditioned risk. Experiments on three open-domain question answering (QA) benchmarks across multiple LLM backbones demonstrate that BalanceRAG meets prescribed risk levels, preserves higher coverage and more accepted correct examples, and reduces unnecessary retrieval calls compared with always-on RAG.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T BalanceRAG: Joint Risk Calibration for Cascaded Retrieval-Augmented Generation
%A Jia, Zijun
%A Ye, Yuanchang
%A Jia, Sen
%A Qian, Yiyao
%A Wang, Haoning
%A Chen, Baojie
%A Tang, Diyin
%A Yu, Jinsong
%A Wang, Zhiyuan
%Y Lee, Hung-Yi
%Y Dev, Sunipa
%Y Li, Jessy
%Y Elliott, Desmond
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026
%D 2026
%8 October
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Budapest, Hungary
%@ 979-8-89176-462-0
%F jia-etal-2026-balancerag
%X Large language models (LLMs) can enhance factuality via retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), but applying RAG to every query is unnecessary when the model-only answer is reliable. This motivates cascaded RAG: each query is first handled by an LLM-only branch, escalated to a RAG fallback only if the primary branch is uncertain, and abstained from when neither branch is sufficiently trustworthy. However, calibrating such cascades stage by stage may be conservative, since the final utility depends on joint uncertainty thresholding of LLM-only and RAG. In this work, we develop **BalanceRAG** to certify threshold pairs at a target risk level. Given uncertainty scores from the two branches, BalanceRAG frames each threshold pair as an operating point on a two-dimensional lattice and identifies safe operating points using sequential graphical testing. This enables risk-adaptive threshold calibration, controlling the system-level error rate among accepted points, while retaining more examples. Furthermore, BalanceRAG extends to multi-risk calibration, allowing retrieval usage to be bounded together with the selection-conditioned risk. Experiments on three open-domain question answering (QA) benchmarks across multiple LLM backbones demonstrate that BalanceRAG meets prescribed risk levels, preserves higher coverage and more accepted correct examples, and reduces unnecessary retrieval calls compared with always-on RAG.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.1391/
%P 29581-29609
Markdown (Informal)
[BalanceRAG: Joint Risk Calibration for Cascaded Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.1391/) (Jia et al., Findings 2026)
ACL
- Zijun Jia, Yuanchang Ye, Sen Jia, Yiyao Qian, Haoning Wang, Baojie Chen, Diyin Tang, Jinsong Yu, and Zhiyuan Wang. 2026. BalanceRAG: Joint Risk Calibration for Cascaded Retrieval-Augmented Generation. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026, pages 29581–29609, Budapest, Hungary. Association for Computational Linguistics.