Cambridge has climbed two spots to third place in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings for 2026, while Oxford’s domination of the top spot continues for the tenth year.

Princeton University shared third place with Cambridge University with a joint score of 97.2, while MIT took second place with a score of 97.7, and Oxford University claimed the top spot with 98.2.

Harvard University and Stanford University took joint fifth place, followed by California Institute of Technology and Imperial College London.

The top ten remains entirely unchanged from the previous year, besides some changes in order, with UC Berkeley and Yale University taking the last two places.

Released yesterday (09/10), the THE rankings are based on eighteen categories, including teaching, research environment, research quality, industry, and international outlook.

Cambridge had the third-highest number of students per staff in the top ten, at 11.3, and featured an international student proportion of 38%, the third-highest proportion following Oxford which had 43%, and Imperial at 60%.

Only six UK universities were featured in the top 50 – with UCL, University of Edinburgh, and King’s College London placing respectively 22nd, 29th, and 38th.

The rankings have been published annually by Times Higher Education, a British magazine, since 2004. They are regarded as one of the most prestigious global university rankings alongside QS University Rankings, contrasting over 2,000 institutions across 115 countries.

Following the recent slip of both Oxford and Cambridge for the first time from the top three of 2026 university rankings of The Times, the rankings published yesterday suggest Oxbridge has not lost its grip on academia quite yet.

However, the rankings continue the trend of UK universities increasingly struggling to perform on a global stage as overseas universities increasingly rise in place.

This year was the first year in which less than 50 UK universities were featured in the top 500. The most represented countries in the rankings, above the UK, were the United States, India, and Japan.

Phil Baty, Chief Global Affairs Officer for THE, said the 2026 rankings demonstrated “clear warning signals of serious decline for the UK’s ‘jewel in the crown’ university sector”.

“This year’s rankings highlight a dramatic and accelerating trend – the shift in the balance of power in research and higher education excellence from the long-established, dominant institutions of the West to rising stars of the East,” he continued.