One German university has been named among the top 50 universities in the world, according to the latest QS World University Rankings. A further four German institutions made it into the top 100.
Every year, QS compiles a list of the best higher education institutions in the world to create the World University Ranking. The 2026 edition features over 1.500 universities, representing over 100 locations around the world.
Each university is assessed on 10 key metrics, each with its own weighting, to calculate an overall score out of 100:
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been named the best university in the world for the 14th time in a row, with a perfect score. Imperial College London and Stanford University rounded out the top three. ETH Zurich in Switzerland and the National University of Singapore were the only universities outside of the US and the UK to make it into the top 10.
The Technical University of Munich (TUM) was named the best university in Germany for the 11th consecutive year. Coming in 22nd place in the overall international ranking, this year saw TUM’s best-ever performance.
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich was the second-best-performing German university, ranking 58th overall. The University of Heidelberg followed, in 80th place in the overall ranking. Freie Universität in Berlin and KIT Karlsruhe Institute of Technology also made it into the top 100, taking 88th and 98th place respectively.
While students and academics celebrate the arrival of university rankings as a chance to congratulate their institutions, international scepticism is growing about the value of ranking systems, their methodologies, and the way the results put pressure on universities.
While the first global university rankings were only published in 2003, the number of publishers has shot up in the past 20 years, with the most influential rankings run by four companies, who “collect vast amounts of data from universities and publicly accessible sources, which they then privatise in order to market them to universities, governments, and other interested parties in the form of performance analytics,” according to the United Nations University (UNU).
In September 2023, Utrecht University in the Netherlands announced it would withdraw from the Times Higher Education (THE) ranking because “makers of the rankings use data and methods that are highly questionable”. The University of Zurich followed suit in March 2024.
According to the Swiss State Secretariat for Education and Research, the “gladiatorial cut-and-thrust” and “clear-cut results” of league tables do much to serve the businesses which publish them and little to offer a “multidimensional concept of university quality”.
Jelena Brankovic, a researcher at the University of Bielefeld whose expertise includes the university ranking industry, advises prospective students to “approach [rankings] with a healthy dose of scepticism”. “[Students] should never rely only on one source of information, such as a ranking, but should try to cast a wide net, compare information from various sources, discuss with peers and parents, and assess this against their own preferences,” Brankovic previously told IamExpat.
For more information and to see the full ranking, visit the QS website.
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