World’s top universities revealed: 2026 rankings

Asian institutions shine in the global spotlight, with Tsinghua, Peking, NUS, University of Tokyo, and HKU in the top 50.

Times Higher Education (THE) has unveiled its World University Rankings 2026, evaluating 2,191 institutions across 115 countries and territories. For the 10^th consecutive year, the University of Oxford (United Kingdom) retains its crown as the world’s top university.

The list of the top 10 global universities is dominated by institutions from the United States, along with three from the United Kingdom.

Top 10 universities in the world in 2026:

  1  University of Oxford (United Kingdom)
  2  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (United States)
=3  Princeton University (United States)
=3  University of Cambridge (United Kingdom)
=5  Harvard University (United States)
=5  Stanford University (United States)
  7  California Institute of Technology (United States)
  8  Imperial College London (United Kingdom)
  9  University of California, Berkeley (United States)
10  Yale University (United States)

The performance of APAC’s top universities

APAC’s universities continue to climb the global ranks, with several institutions making historic gains:

• China now has five universities in the top 40, up from three last year, led by Tsinghua University and Peking University.
  
• India has emerged with the second highest number of ranked universities for the first time, behind only the US.
  
• Hong Kong occupies a record six spots in the top 200, and eight institutions featured overall.
  
• Singapore's Nanyang Technological University joins the National University of Singapore, in the top 40.
  
• South Korea sees significant improvement in research quality, with four universities now in the top 100.
  
• Japan’s University of Tokyo climbs to 26^th, its highest-ever global ranking.
• A total of 12 Australian institutions have advanced their standing in this year’s rankings. The universities of Melbourne and Sydney both moved up the ladder, to 37^th and joint 53^rd place respectively.

APAC’s top 10 universities:

• Tsinghua University (12^th globally)
• Peking University (13^th globally)
• National University of Singapore (17^th globally)
• The University of Tokyo (26^th globally)
• Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (31^st globally)
• University of Hong Kong (33^rd globally)
• Fudan University (36^th globally)
• University of Melbourne (37^th globally)
• Zhejiang University (39^th globally)
• Shanghai Jiao Tong University (40^th globally)

How rankings are determined

The THE World University Rankings are based on 18 performance indicators across five key pillars:

• Teaching (the learning environment)
• Research environment (volume, income and reputation)
• Research quality (citation impact, research strength, research excellence and research influence)
• International outlook (staff, students and research)
• Industry (income and patents)

These metrics provide view of how research-intensive universities perform across their core missions.