MM-IFEval
Multimodal models follow image-grounded instructions with exact output constraints. Checks mix rule-based verification and a judge model.
Released with the MM-IFEngine training pipeline. 35 upvotes on Hugging Face papers.
In the authors’ words
The Instruction Following (IF) ability measures how well Multi-modal Large Language Models (MLLMs) understand exactly what users are telling them and whether they are doing it right. Existing multimodal instruction following training data is scarce, the benchmarks are simple with atomic instructions, and the evaluation strategies are imprecise for tasks demanding exact output constraints. To address this, we present MM-IFEngine, an effective pipeline to generate high-quality image-instruction pairs. Our MM-IFEngine pipeline yields large-scale, diverse, and high-quality training data MM-IFInstruct-23k, which is suitable for Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) and extended as MM-IFDPO-23k for Direct Preference Optimization (DPO). We further introduce MM-IFEval, a challenging and diverse multi-modal instruction-following benchmark that includes (1) both compose-level constraints for output responses and perception-level constraints tied to the input images, and (2) a comprehensive evaluation pipeline incorporating both rule-based assessment and judge model. We conduct SFT and DPO experiments and demonstrate that fine-tuning MLLMs on MM-IFInstruct-23k and MM-IFDPO-23k achieves notable gains on various IF benchmarks, such as MM-IFEval (+10.2%), MIA (+7.6%), and IFEval (+12.3%). We have fully open-sourced the datasets (both SFT and DPO), evaluation code and training scripts at https://github.com/SYuan03/MM-IFEngine.
- Level
- Everyday Most adults, without training
- Scored
- Checked automatically A program checks the result against an answer key, unit tests or the expected final state.
- Answers
- Open-ended Free-form text, documents, designs or media judged as a whole.
STEP3-VL-10B leads with 61.9% among models released by Aug 2026
Best score per model as labs report them in their own cards. Labs pick their own settings, so these compare less cleanly than independent runs.
The newest model with a score here came out in Aug 2026, and nobody has reported a newer one. Among the 20 highest-ranked models on the capability index, these have no score yet:
- GPT-6 Astra
- Claude Opus 5.5
- GPT-6.1 Terra
- GPT-6.1 Sol
- and 16 more
- 1
STEP3-VL-10B 61.9%
- 2 LFM2.5-VL-3B 60.6%
- 3 LFM2-VL-1.6B 46.4%
| # | Model | Score | Setting | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | | 61.9% | Jan 2026 | Model card | |
| 2 | LFM2.5-VL-3B | 60.6% | Aug 2026 | Model card | |
| 3 | LFM2-VL-1.6B | 46.4% | Nov 2025 | Model card |
2 models have held number one since its release in Apr 2025
Lab claims count from the day the card came out, independent runs from the model’s release.
Scores over time
All the scores we have, one dot each, so a model tested at several settings appears more than once.
Labs headline it less often now, last in Aug 2026
Launch posts from every lab that has listed it, one tick per post. Tall colored ticks include it, and short gray ones leave it out.
| Date | Launch post | Score | As the post writes it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Aug 2026 | LFM2.5-VL-3B | 60.6 | MM-IFEval |
| 12 Aug 2025 | LFM2-VL-1.6B | 37.7 | MM-IFEval |
2 system cards report it, from 2 labs
Besides launch posts, we read the system cards, model cards and technical reports labs publish with a release. They report far more, including safety and frontier-risk tests.
| Date | Document | Score | As the document writes it | Section |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 Jan 2026 | | 61.9 | MM-IFEval, SeRe (Table 1) | Capabilities |
| 28 Nov 2025 | LFM2-VL-1.6B technical report | 46.4 | MM-IFEval, LFM2-VL-1.6B (Table 8) | Capabilities |
More in Instructions and chat
- IFEval In use Models answer about 500 prompts containing verifiable instructions such as word limits or required keywords. Code checks each instruction for strict and loose accuracy.
Gemma 4 31B IT 98.9%
- IFBench In use 58 new out-of-domain verifiable output constraints. Scored by programmatic constraint checks (strict or loose).
Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B 82.9%
- MultiChallenge In use Multi-turn conversations testing instruction retention, inference memory, versioned editing and self-coherence. Graded by LLM judge with rubrics. GPT-6.1 Sol 82%
- Multi-IF In use Models follow verifiable instructions over three-turn conversations in eight languages, extending IFEval. Scored by instruction accuracy at each turn. LFM3-1.7B 89.1%
- AdvancedIF In use Models respond to over 1,600 prompts with complex, multi-turn, and system-level instructions. A judge model checks each response against expert-written rubrics.
MAI-Thinking-1 85%
- IFStruct In use Models generate JSON or YAML that must follow a requested schema and phrasing constraints, without constrained decoding. A response passes only if every structural constraint holds. LFM3-1.7B 93.7%