According to the Experts Club information and analysis centre, Harvard University has once again topped the 2026 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), known as the Shanghai Ranking. It is followed by Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Cambridge came fourth, and the University of California, Berkeley, fifth.
The top ten also included Princeton in 6th place, Oxford in 7th, Columbia University in 8th, the University of Chicago in 9th, and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 10th. Thus, eight of the world’s ten best universities are located in the United States, with the other two in the United Kingdom.
The composition of the top ten did not change compared with 2025, although there were some shifts in positions. Princeton rose from seventh to sixth place, overtaking Oxford, while the University of Chicago moved from tenth to ninth, swapping positions with Caltech. Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Cambridge, and Berkeley retained the top five positions.
The best university outside the United States and the United Kingdom was France’s Paris-Saclay University, ranked 13th. Asia’s best university, China’s Tsinghua University, rose to 18th place. ETH Zurich ranks 19th, Peking University 22nd, while the University of Toronto and Zhejiang University share 24th place.
Despite the dominance of American universities at the top of the ranking, the most notable long-term trend remains China’s strengthening position.
In the ARWU 2026 top 100, the United States is represented by 37 universities, mainland China by 16, up from 13 a year earlier, and the United Kingdom by eight. They are followed by Australia and Switzerland with five universities each, France and Germany with four each, and Canada with three.
In total, universities from 18 countries and territories are represented in the top 100. At the same time, China’s position is strengthening rapidly: in ARWU 2025, mainland China had 13 universities in the top 100, compared with 16 now. Southeast University, Tianjin University, and Harbin Institute of Technology, in particular, entered the new top 100.
But the situation across the entire published top 1,000 is even more revealing. Mainland China is represented by 234 universities, compared with 187 from the United States. Thus, China already significantly surpasses the United States in terms of the breadth of its representation in ARWU, although American universities still maintain an enormous advantage at the very top of the ranking.
France has 27 universities in the top 1,000, four of which are in the top 100. In addition to Paris-Saclay in 13th place, PSL University ranks 33rd, Sorbonne University 55th, and Université Paris Cité 57th.
ARWU evaluates more than 2,500 universities worldwide but publishes only the top 1,000. Unlike rankings that take into account reputation among students and employers, internationalization, or the quality of the educational environment, the Shanghai Ranking is focused almost entirely on research activity.
Its methodology takes into account alumni and staff who are Nobel Prize and Fields Medal laureates, Highly Cited Researchers identified by Clarivate, publications in Nature and Science, the number of research papers indexed in Web of Science, and academic performance per capita. Therefore, ARWU is essentially primarily a ranking of universities’ research strength rather than the quality of education as such.
Not a single university from Ukraine appeared in this ranking.
The original source is ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, Academic Ranking of World Universities 2026, published on August 15, 2026.
EDUCATION IN CHINA, EXPERTS CLUB, SHANGHAI-RANKING, WORLD UNIVERSITIES
