Benchmark Almanac

MM-IFEval

STEP3-VL-10B 61.9% leads since Jan 2026 Fading

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.

Abstract of MM-IFEngine: Towards Multimodal Instruction Following (arXiv:2504.07957, CC0)
Made by MM-IFEngine team (Ding et al.) Released Apr 2025 Following precise instructions All tasks public Last in a launch post Aug 2026 , dropped before it saturated Last model added Aug 2026
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.
3
Models scored in lab cards
2
Launch posts list it, from 1 lab
2
System cards report it, from 2 labs

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:

  1. 1 STEP3-VL-10B 61.9%
  2. 2 LFM2.5-VL-3B 60.6%
  3. 3 LFM2-VL-1.6B 46.4%
#ModelScoreSettingDateSource
1 STEP3-VL-10B 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.

Liquid AI StepFun
Lab claims Not tested since Aug 2026
STEP3-VL-10B 61.9%

Scores over time

All the scores we have, one dot each, so a model tested at several settings appears more than once.

Reported by the lab in its model card Best so far
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 2026 Near the ceiling (85%) STEP3-VL-10B LFM2-VL-1.6B LFM2-VL-1.6B 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 2026 Near the ceiling (85%) STEP3-VL-10B LFM2-VL-1.6B

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.

Liquid AI
DateLaunch postScoreAs 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.

DateDocumentScoreAs the document writes itSection
14 Jan 2026 STEP3-VL-10B technical report 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

All 76 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%