Only 3 Indian institutes in top 200 in QS University Rankings 2026 amid 54 listed

The QS World University Rankings 2026 were released there’s some good news, and some not-so-good. Fifty-four Indian universities have made it to the global list this year, compared to only 11 in 2014. This makes India the fourth most represented country overall, after the USA, UK, and China. But only three of those have made it to the top 200.

IIT Delhi has climbed to the 123rd position, up from 150 last year, and 197 in 2024. It’s now India’s highest-ranked university in QS Rankings 2026. The institute has done well across key parameters -- 50th in Employer Reputation, 86th in Citations per Faculty, and 142nd in Academic Reputation.

IIT Bombay, which was the top Indian institute in 2025 at rank 118, slipped slightly to 129. But the surprise rise came from IIT Madras, which jumped 47 spots to land at 180, making one of the biggest gains for India in this year’s list.

8 NEW INDIAN UNIVERSITIES JOIN RANKINGS

In another boost, eight Indian institutions entered the QS rankings for the first time, the highest number of new entries by any country this year. This expansion shows how Indian universities are slowly gaining global visibility.

Apart from the IITs, IIT Kharagpur stands at 215, IISc Bangalore at 219, and Delhi University at 328. From the private sector, BITS Pilani sits at 668 and OP Jindal Global University remains in the 851–900 band.

Here are the top 20 Indian universities as per QS World University Rankings 2026:

Rank in India	Global Rank	University Name	Location (State)
1	123	Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD)	Delhi
2	129	Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB)	Maharashtra
3	180	Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM)	Tamil Nadu
4	=215	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT-KGP)	West Bengal
5	=219	Indian Institute of Science (IISc)	Karnataka
6	222	Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK)	Uttar Pradesh
7	=328	University of Delhi	Delhi
8	=334	Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IITG)	Assam
9	=339	Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IITR)	Uttarakhand
10	=465	Anna University	Tamil Nadu
11	503	Shoolini University of Biotechnology and Management Sciences	Himachal Pradesh
12	=556	Indian Institute of Technology Indore	Madhya Pradesh
13	=558	Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)	Delhi
14	=566	Indian Institute of Technology BHU Varanasi	Uttar Pradesh
15	=566	Savitribai Phule Pune University	Maharashtra
16	=575	Chandigarh University	Punjab
17	=664	Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH)	Telangana
18	=664	University of Mumbai	Maharashtra
19	=668	Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani	Rajasthan
20	=676	Jadavpur University	West Bengal

(Note: The rankings as mentioned below are at time accompanied by ‘=’ which indicates that the position is shared by other institutes.)

GLOBAL RANKINGS: MIT STILL ON TOP

At the global level, MIT continues to reign at Rank 1 for the 14th straight year. Imperial College London has moved up to second, pushing Stanford University to third.

Asia has also made impressive strides -- Peking University is steady at 14th, Tsinghua University rises to 17th, and Fudan University makes a strong leap to 30th.

Here are the top 10 universities globally as per QS World University Rankings 2026:

Rank	University Name	Location
1	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)	Cambridge, United States
2	Imperial College London	London, United Kingdom
3	Stanford University	Stanford, United States
4	University of Oxford	Oxford, United Kingdom
5	Harvard University	Cambridge, United States
6	University of Cambridge	Cambridge, United Kingdom
7	ETH Zurich	Zrich, Switzerland
8	National University of Singapore (NUS)	Singapore, Singapore
9	University College London (UCL)	London, United Kingdom
10	California Institute of Technology (Caltech)	Pasadena, United States

WHAT’S NEW IN THE METHODOLOGY?

This year’s rankings included over 1,500 universities from more than 100 locations. A new metric, International Student Diversity, was introduced (though not yet scored). It tracks both how many and how diverse the international student population is at each university.

Check the full QS World University Rankings 2026 here