World University Rankings 2025 | Times Higher Education (THE)

Explore the top ranked universities in the world

Discover the top universities worldwide with the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2025. This year, we have ranked more than 2,000 institutions from 115 countries and territories.

University rankings 2025: key insights

• Oxford holds on to the top spot for the ninth consecutive year, bolstered by significant improvements in industry engagement and teaching
• MIT rises to second place, overtaking Stanford, which drops to sixth
• China edges closer to the top 10, further boosting its global research influence
• Australia’s top five universities all slip down the rankings, due to declining reputation and international outlook
• Three new countries join the top 200 – Brazil, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – highlighting the rise of emerging markets in higher education

Explore the table below to discover the full rankings and how universities around the world are performing this year.

Recognised as the world’s most comprehensive evaluation of university performance, our latest WUR 3.0 methodology includes 18 carefully calibrated indicators to assess institutions across five key areas: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry engagement and international outlook. 

The 2025 rankings includes 2,092 ranked universities. There are 185 new entries when compared with last year.

Overall, we collected 472,694 datapoints from 2,860 institutions that submitted data.

Learn more:

Our detailed methodology, trusted worldwide by students, teachers, academics, governments and industry experts, is based on:

• 157 million citations
• 18 million research publications
• survey responses from more than 93,000 scholars globally

Our analysis shows that the reputations of the UK and US higher education sectors are declining. 

There is more analysis on the results, including tables, charts and interviews with university leaders in our World University Rankings 2025 digital report.

To unlock the data behind THE’s rankings and access a range of analytical and benchmarking tools, visit our data and insights page.