There are many lists of "classic" papers in programming languages. This page collects a number of them.
Great Works in Programming Languages curated by Benjamin C. Pierce with suggestions from the Types list (2004).
A reading list for Karl Crary's version of the CMU 15-819 course (2009).
A list of classic papers by Jonathan Aldrich (2009).
A graduate student reading list by Matt Might (~2008).
An extensive functional programming books overview by Alexey Ott (~2015).
A reading list for the Cornell CS 7194 course ("Great works in Programming Languages") (2019).
A Twitter thread on important papers in programming languages as Taylor Swift by Jean Yang (2020).