ISLAMABAD: The global higher education ranking organization QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) has released its World University Rankings for the year 2026, according to which no university from Pakistan has managed to secure a place among the top 350 universities in the world.
According to the QS rankings:
Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad is ranked 354th.
National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) is ranked 371st.
The report states that Pakistan\’s largest university, the University of Karachi, managed to secure a position within the top 1001 universities, but no other university from Sindh made it to the list of the top 1500 universities globally.
Overall, 18 Pakistani universities were included among the top 1500 institutions worldwide in the QS global rankings.
Other notable Pakistani universities in the rankings include:
University of the Punjab – 542nd
Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) – 555th
University of Agriculture, Faisalabad – 654th
COMSATS University, Islamabad – 664th
Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (PIEAS) – 721st
University of Engineering and Technology (UET), Lahore – 801st
University of Peshawar – 901st
Aga Khan University – 1001st
University of Management and Technology (UMT) – 1201st and
Islamia University of Bahawalpur – 1401st.
Top 10 global universities in the QS 2026 rankings:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA – 1st (unchanged)
Imperial College London, UK – 2nd
Stanford University, USA – 3rd
University of Oxford, UK – 4th
Harvard University, USA – 5th
University of Cambridge, UK – 6th
ETH Zurich, Switzerland – 7th
National University of Singapore (NUS) – 8th
University College London (UCL), UK – 9th and
California Institute of Technology (Caltech), USA – 10th.