QS World University Rankings 2026: Top Global Universities

QS World University Rankings is an authoritative ranking of the world’s best universities, compiled by the British consulting company Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). The ranking is updated annually and serves as a guide for students choosing a university — both in their home country and abroad.

Ranking Criteria

The evaluation of universities is based on several factors, each with its own weight:

1. Academic Reputation — 30% 
2. Citations per Faculty — 20%
3. Employer Reputation —15% 
4. Faculty Student Ratio — 10% 
5. International Student Ratio — 5% 
6. International Faculty Ratio — 5% 
7. Employment Outcomes — 5% 
8. International Research Network — 5% 
9. Sustainability — 5% (the institution's attention to environmental and social issues)

Results of the 2026 Ranking

Massachusetts Institute of Technology once again takes first place — the university has led the ranking for 14 consecutive years. It is followed by Imperial College London (2nd) and Stanford University (3rd).

The United States and the United Kingdom maintain leading positions in terms of the number of universities included in the ranking — 192 and 90 respectively. In total, the new ranking includes 1,500 institutions from 106 countries.

The top 100 universities in the world in 2026 include:

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) — USA
2. Imperial College London — UK
3. Stanford University — USA
4. University of Oxford — UK
5. Harvard University — USA
6. University of Cambridge — UK
7. ETH Zurich — Switzerland
8. National University of Singapore (NUS) — Singapore
9. UCL — UK
10. California Institute of Technology (Caltech) — USA
11. The University of Hong Kong — Hong Kong (China)
12. Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore) — Singapore
13. University of Chicago — USA
14. Peking University — China
15. University of Pennsylvania — USA
16. Cornell University — USA
17. Tsinghua University — China
18. University of California, Berkeley (UCB) — USA
19. The University of Melbourne — Australia
20. The University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney) — Australia
21. Yale University — USA
22. EPFL – École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne — Switzerland
23. Technical University of Munich — Germany
24. Johns Hopkins University — USA
25. Princeton University — USA
26. The University of Sydney — Australia
27. McGill University — Canada
28. Université PSL — France
29. University of Toronto — Canada
30. Fudan University — China
31. King’s College London — UK
32. Australian National University (ANU) — Australia
33. The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) — Hong Kong (China)
34. The University of Edinburgh — UK
35. The University of Manchester — UK
36. Monash University — Australia
37. The University of Tokyo — Japan
38. Columbia University — USA
39. Seoul National University — South Korea
40. University of British Columbia — Canada
41. Institut Polytechnique de Paris — France
42. Northwestern University — USA
43. The University of Queensland — Australia
44. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) — Hong Kong (China)
45. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor — USA
46. University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) — USA
47. Delft University of Technology — Netherlands
48. Shanghai Jiao Tong University — China
49. Zhejiang University — China
50. Yonsei University — South Korea
51. University of Bristol — UK
52. Carnegie Mellon University — USA
53. University of Amsterdam — Netherlands
54. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University — Hong Kong (China)
55. New York University (NYU) — USA
56. The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) — UK
57. Kyoto University — Japan
58. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München — Germany
59. Universiti Malaya (UM) — Malaysia
60. KU Leuven — Belgium
61. Korea University — South Korea
62. Duke University — USA
63. City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) — Hong Kong (China)
64. National Taiwan University (NTU) — Taiwan
65. The University of Auckland — New Zealand
66. University of California, San Diego (UCSD) — USA
67. KFUPM — Saudi Arabia
68. University of Texas at Austin — USA
69. Brown University — USA
70. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign — USA
71. Université Paris-Saclay — France
72. Lund University — Sweden
73. Sorbonne University — France
74. The University of Warwick — UK
75. Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin — Ireland
76. University of Birmingham — UK
77. The University of Western Australia — Australia
78. KTH Royal Institute of Technology — Sweden
79. University of Glasgow — UK
80. Universität Heidelberg — Germany
81. University of Washington — USA
82. University of Adelaide — Australia
83. Pennsylvania State University — USA
84. Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) — Argentina
85. Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) — Japan
86. University of Leeds — UK
87. University of Southampton — UK
88. Boston University — USA
89. Freie Universität Berlin — Germany
90. Purdue University — USA
91. Osaka University — Japan
92. The University of Sheffield — UK
93. Uppsala University — Sweden
94. Durham University — UK
95. University of Alberta — Canada
96. University of Technology Sydney — Australia
97. University of Nottingham — UK
98. KIT, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology — Germany
99. Politecnico di Milano — Italy
100. University of Zurich — Switzerland