World University Rankings by Subject 2026: results announced

Find your university in the World University Rankings by Subject 2026

Universities across Asia continue to improve in STEM fields in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings by Subject 2026 and are now rising faster than their European and North American rivals in other areas such as the arts.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) topped the tables in arts and humanities, business and economics, and social sciences – in a repeat of last year. Elsewhere in the US, Stanford University ranked number one in education and law, Harvard University in engineering and life sciences, and California Institute of Technology in physical sciences.

The other three of the 11 subject tables were topped by UK institutions. The University of Oxford led the way in computer science and medical and health, while the University of Cambridge overtook Stanford in psychology. Only Harvard, Stanford and Cambridge appear in all 11 subject rankings’ top 10s.

View the full World University Rankings by Subject 2026 results 

- Arts and Humanities
- Business and Economics
- Computer Science
- Education Studies
- Engineering
- Law
- Life Sciences
- Medical and Health
- Physical Sciences
- Psychology 
- Social Sciences

While the upper echelons of the tables may seem familiar, analysis reveals larger shifts at play across the full rankings. The US occupied 68 of the 111 top-10 slots (compared with 67 out of 110 last year), but the UK’s total fell slightly to 29.

In addition to the four top-10 positions across education and business that it had last year, China has gained three more in 2026. Peking University moved up to 10th place in computer science and eighth place in engineering, while Tsinghua University broke into the top 10 for physical sciences.

In life sciences there are now three top-20 Asian universities for the first time as the National University of Singapore rises to 19th place.

Among Asian universities, 17 per cent went up in the rankings for life sciences, 16 per cent for physical sciences and 19 per cent for computer science.

But the 2026 data suggests that Asian institutions are rising even faster in other areas, and quicker than those in North America and Europe.

Futao Huang, professor at the Research Institute for Higher Education at Hiroshima University, said growth in science across Asia has not stalled, but has clearly slowed relative to the past decade.

“As institutions approach the global frontier, marginal gains naturally become harder. At the same time, policy attention and institutional investment in many Asian systems are now expanding beyond STEM, which partly explains the faster upward movement we are seeing in areas such as law, education, and arts and humanities.”

Almost half of Asian institutions (47 per cent) improved their law ranking, while 32 per cent did so for education, 29 per cent for arts and humanities and 26 per cent for business and economics. Three Asian universities made the top 10 for business and economics for the first time.

In contrast, just 13 per cent of their counterparts in Europe and 17 per cent in North America improved in arts and humanities.

Under supportive conditions, Huang said Asian universities could enter the global top 10 in arts and humanities within the next decade, but progress will likely be uneven across countries.

While Japan has long-standing strengths in arts and humanities and China clearly has the capacity and scale to do so, Huang said Singapore is arguably best positioned in the short to medium term to breach the top 10 in arts and humanities first.

“Its strong English-language environment, highly internationalised faculty and comparatively open academic culture provide favourable conditions for arts and humanities and social sciences to gain greater global recognition,” he said.

Number one-ranked institutions across World University Rankings by Subject 2026

In China, 31 per cent of universities improved in arts and humanities, 38 per cent in education and 80 per cent in law. Similarly in South Korea, 42 per cent went up in education and in Japan 55 per cent in arts and humanities.

Philip Altbach, professor emeritus at Boston College’s Centre for International Higher Education, said Asian universities continue their steady rise because of heavy investment in improving or creating research-intensive universities in China, as well as Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea.

He said the continent’s academic systems have “matured”; there are a greater range of universities and an often-dramatic expansion in access to higher education.

“For all of these reasons, Asian universities are now major players on the international scene,” he added.

“Global higher education is becoming more multipolar with the domination of Western Europe and North America to some extent weakening, and this is a good thing for higher education.”

The World University Rankings by Subject 2026 use the same broad methodology as the overall World University Rankings 2026, with 18 performance indicators across teaching, research, knowledge transfer and internationalisation, but adjustments have been made to the metric weightings and publication and staff thresholds for each subject area to more accurately assess performance at the subject level.

A continued rise in the volume of publications from East Asia in the humanities and social sciences has now been accompanied by an improvement in quality, according to Hugo Horta, an associate professor at the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong.

Horta said a likely key driver behind Asia’s rise in these subjects is down to an “obsession” among PhD students in the region to publish papers during their doctoral studies. 

“Other academics and PhD students will cite them, creating a publishing-citation cumulative advantage that raises the profile of the affiliated authors and publications in the rankings.”

He said universities in China, Hong Kong and Singapore will not only be in the top 10 in the near future for these categories, but may take the lead at some point.

“The competition is on, and the conditions for universities of these countries and jurisdictions to take the lead is set. It will be a matter of time if the current conditions are maintained in Asia and elsewhere.”

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com