The so-called "Shanghai Ranking" - the Academic Ranking of World Universities - is a leading international ranking of higher education institutions, and its 2026 edition was published on Saturday.
Seven Polish universities made it into the top-1000 this time. The University of Warsaw was ranked highest, in the 401-500 range. First place, just like last year, was scooped by Harvard University.
The second-highest Polish university on the list was Kraków's Jagiellonian University, ranked in the 501-600 range, while the third-best AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków ranked in the 701-800 range.
Four more Polish universities ranked 901-1000: Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Warsaw University of Technology, and Wrocław University of Science and Technology.
The position of Polish universities in the ranking remained mostly unchanged compared to last year. Only AGH University of Science and Technology recorded a slight increase. Two years prior, in 2024, there were eight Polish institutions in the ranking, in 2023 there were nine, and in 2022 - eleven.
American universities once again dominated the ARWU global ranking in 2026. Harvard University, Stanford University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology took the top three spots, with a total of 37 US schools in the top 100.
The highest-ranking European universities were the UK's University of Cambridge (4th place) and the University of Oxford (7th place). Among European Union universities, 13th-ranked Paris-Saclay University of France was the best.
Chinese universities are playing an increasingly important role in the ranking - this year they accounted for as many as 257 of the top-1000 institutions (the highest representation globally), and 18 of them qualified for the top 100 (five more than last year). The US took second place in this domain with 187.
Further on the top-1000 highest representation list were the United Kingdom (57), Germany (51), Italy (42), Spain (30), Australia (29), South Korea (29), France (27), and Japan (26).
The annual Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) was first published in June 2003 by the Center for World-Class Universities, Graduate School of Education of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. Since 2009 the study has been published and copyrighted by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy - a fully independent organization on higher education intelligence, not legally subordinated to any universities or government agencies.
ARWU uses six objective indicators to rank world universities, including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, number of highly cited researchers selected by Clarivate, number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index in the Web of Science, and per capita performance of a university.
More than 2500 universities are actually ranked by ARWU every year and the best 1000 are published. The exact positions are given only for the top 100, while the remaining locations are approximate and appear in groups of 50 or 100.
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Source: PAP, IAR