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The 2026 “QS World University Rankings” have been published. These contain rankings by subject matter, including philosophy.
The rankings are conducted by the London-based education data firm Quacquarelli Symonds.
As I noted in a post about an earlier version of these rankings:
In the QS rankings, a school’s overall score for a particular subject is determined by a weighted formula that varies by area. In the arts and humanities, for the 2023 results, the formula used is: 60% academic reputation, 20% employer reputation, 7.5% citations per paper, 7.5% H-index, and 5% “International Research Metric“. (It is not clear why these factors are given these particular weights.)
QS does not specify whether its rankings are intended to assist prospective undergraduate or graduate students. The rankings have come under fire at various points for methodological concerns as well as conflicts of interest. Some of the results in philosophy will strike many readers as odd. So be aware that these rankings are controversial (as, of course, is the very idea of fine-grained rankings of places to study philosophy), and take note of alternative sources of information, such as departmental websites, Academic Philosophy Data & Analysis and the Philosophical Gourmet Report (noting that various criticisms have also been made of the latter).
With those caveats in mind, here are the top 50 schools in the 2026 QS Rankings in Philosophy:
Rank University Name Employer Reputation H-Index Citations Citations Per Paper Academic Reputation 1 New York University (NYU) 75.7 90.5 96.8 100 2 Rutgers University–New Brunswick 57.2 77.5 85.7 97.7 3 University of Oxford 100 100 94.2 88.6 4 Australian National University (ANU) 82.8 85.5 93.2 91.4 5 University of Pittsburgh 40.3 78.3 84.7 96 6 University of Wollongong 63.7 79.1 97.4 90.4 7 University of Cambridge 98.1 88.6 88.6 86.1 8 The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) 97.1 87.1 95.6 85.2 9 Harvard University 98.4 83.7 87.1 84.2 10 University of Toronto 86.1 82.5 84.5 83.8 11 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München 77.5 83.1 85.3 82.2 12 University of St Andrews 74.3 81.8 87.7 81.9 13 Princeton University 80.9 83.1 90.5 80.7 14 Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin 85.2 79.1 86.8 81.3 14 King’s College London 88.8 83.7 87.5 80.3 16 The University of Sydney 76.7 84.9 87.7 80.3 17 Stanford University 95.8 81.2 88.1 79.2 18 Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia) 70.5 81.8 94.3 79 18 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 94.9 81.2 99 76.8 20 University of Notre Dame 54.7 79.1 85.6 81.3 21 University of California, Berkeley (UCB) 83.7 74.1 83.9 79.6 21 Yale University 89.3 75.9 85.1 78.9 23 Ruhr-Universität Bochum 55.6 86 87.5 78.8 24 The University of Edinburgh 82.6 83.7 87.5 75.8 25 National University of Singapore (NUS) 93.8 82.5 91.7 73.8 26 University of Chicago 79.2 70.1 77.2 77.8 27 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 74.1 77.5 89.9 75 28 University of Southern California 71.5 81.8 92.7 73.5 29 KU Leuven 76.6 75.9 78 75.4 30 Monash University 74.4 80.5 88 72.4 31 Universität Heidelberg 87.2 65.2 75.6 74.1 32 University of Amsterdam 80.7 87.6 90.9 68.5 33 Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) 89.4 70.1 90.8 69.6 34 Freie Universitaet Berlin 78.9 74.1 83.1 70.6 35 Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne 82.5 66.5 69 73 36 University of Navarra 71.2 65.2 69 73.7 37 Wuhan University 80.4 65.2 81.3 71.3 38 The University of Warwick 74.3 83.7 88.8 68 39 Durham University 79.7 80.5 89.4 67.9 39 Kyoto University 72.2 50.6 69.5 75.1 41 University of Bristol 67.8 84.3 92.3 67.6 42 University of Turin 63.3 71.2 72.3 72.1 43 University of California, Irvine 0 83.1 89.9 72.3 44 University of Southampton 64.3 82.5 95.6 67.2 45 Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main 48.3 74.1 82 71 46 University of Leeds 64.9 80.5 90.2 67.6 46 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 55.1 79.8 90.8 68.3 48 Université PSL 66.4 79.1 81.4 68.7 49 University of Vienna 78.5 80.5 82.3 67.1 50 University of Copenhagen 66.1 82.5 89.8 66.1
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