Times Higher Education 2026: The World’s Best Universities

The prestigious British publication Times Higher Education (THE) has unveiled its annual World University Rankings 2026, listing 2,191 universities from 115 countries and territories.

THE evaluates universities based on the following key criteria:

• Quality of teaching
• Research excellence
• Research influence (citations)
• International outlook
• Industry engagement

As in previous years, the top 10 positions are dominated by leading universities from the United States and the United Kingdom:

1. University of Oxford

2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

3. Princeton University 

3. University of Cambridge 

5. Harvard University

5. Stanford University

7. California Institute of Technology (Caltech)

8. Imperial College London

9. University of California, Berkeley

10. Yale University

Key highlights of the 2026 ranking:

• Oxford University retains its number-one position for the tenth consecutive year, driven by strong research performance.
• Princeton University rises from fourth to joint third place, sharing the spot with the University of Cambridge.
• China now has five universities in the top 40, up from three last year.
• Four South Korean universities are featured in the top 100.
• Hong Kong achieves a record six places in the top 200, thanks to improvements in teaching quality.
• India ranks second globally in terms of the number of universities featured, surpassing all but the United States for the first time.

Overall, the 2026 results highlight the growing strength of Asian universities, which continue to climb the global rankings. Meanwhile, universities in the United States and the United Kingdom have seen a modest decline in performance: in 2025, 38 U.S. universities were listed in the top 100, while in 2026 that number dropped to 35.