Out-of-Distribution Generalization in Graph Foundation Models

Haoyang Li; Haibo Chen; Xin Wang; Wenwu Zhu

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arXiv · 2601.21067

Out-of-Distribution Generalization in Graph Foundation Models

Haoyang Li·Haibo Chen·Xin Wang·Wenwu Zhu

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Abstract

Graphs are a fundamental data structure for representing relational information in domains such as social networks, molecular systems, and knowledge graphs. However, graph learning models often suffer from limited generalization when applied beyond their training distributions. In practice, distribution shifts may arise from changes in graph structure, domain semantics, available modalities, or task formulations. To address these challenges, graph foundation models (GFMs) have recently emerged, aiming to learn general-purpose representations through large-scale pretraining across diverse graphs and tasks. In this survey, we review recent progress on GFMs from the perspective of out-of-distribution (OOD) generalization. We first discuss the main challenges posed by distribution shifts in graph learning and outline a unified problem setting. We then organize existing approaches based on whether they are designed to operate under a fixed task specification or to support generalization across heterogeneous task formulations, and summarize the corresponding OOD handling strategies and pretraining objectives. Finally, we review common evaluation protocols and discuss open directions for future research. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first survey for OOD generalization in GFMs.

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Haoyang Li, Haibo Chen, Xin Wang, Wenwu Zhu. 2026-01-28. Out-of-Distribution Generalization in Graph Foundation Models. https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.21067

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