The international organisation The Center for World University Rankings has announced the results of the latest edition of the ranking of the world's best universities. The Jagiellonian University has once again achieved the highest position amongst Polish universities. The three top universities, as usual, are based in the United States.
Since 2012, CWUR has published the only academic ranking of world universities that assesses the quality of education, employment opportunities, the quality of academic staff, and scientific research, without relying on surveys and data provided by universities. The ranking began in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, as a project aimed at classifying the top 100 universities in the world. It quickly gained recognition from universities and media worldwide, leading to numerous requests for its expansion. In 2019, it was expanded to include the top 2000 universities globally, making it the largest academic ranking of world universities.
CWUR is created based on 8 criteria: the success of graduates and academic staff in international competitions, the employment of graduates in executive positions at global companies, publications in esteemed scientific journals and the most influential periodicals, citations, the Hirsch index of the entire university, and the number of international patents.
In this year's edition of the ranking, the list of top ten universities remains unchanged. The first three places were taken by Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Stanford University. The next two went to British institutions – University of Cambridge and University of Oxford. They were followed by Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Yale University, and University of Chicago.
The World University Ranking 2026 featured 39 Polish universities. Among them, the highest positions were taken by the Jagiellonian University (rank 396), University of Warsaw (rank 438), and AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków (rank 627). The top ten is rounded out by Warsaw University of Technology (762), Henryk Niewodniczański Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (807), Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (859), National Centre for Nuclear Research (889), Medical University in Wrocław (890), Medical University of Warsaw (908), and University of Wrocław
The full ranking results are available on the CWUR website.
