King’s College London drops two places in Times Higher Education World Rankings 2026

King’s College London has dropped two places in the Times Higher Education World University rankings for 2026.

The annual rankings assess research universities around the globe across five distinct categories, including teaching, research environment, research quality, and industry.

This year the rankings feature 2,191 universities across 115 countries and territories, providing a valuable guide for prospective students, academics and policymakers.

King’s scored the highest in the international outlook and research quality categories, achieving a score of 96.9 and 95.5 respectively.

Other categories that received high scores included industry at 72.3 and research environment at 72.1, meanwhile teaching scored much lower at just 64.2.

Each category that King’s was assessed in is weighted by a different percentage:

• Teaching: 29.5 per cent
• Research environment: 29 per cent
• Research quality: 30 per cent
• Industry: 4 per cent
• International outlook: 7.5 per cent

This resulted in the university achieving an overall score of 78.7, making it stand in the 38th spot and marks a drop of two places from the previous year’s rank of 36.

However, despite this result, in the Times Higher Education UK rankings King’s did place in the 6th position above renowned Russell Group universities including London School of Economics, the University of Manchester and the University of Bristol. 

The university also did well in other rankings this year including placing 19th nationally in rankings compiled by the Complete University Guide, being amongst the top five best UK universities in the QS world rankings as well as the top 25 best UK universities in The Guardian’s 2026 university rankings. 

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Other universities that ranked highly in the Times Higher Education rankings included Oxford who snubbed the top spot for the ninth consecutive year with a near perfect overall score of 98.2 as well as King’s biggest rival UCL, who ranked in the 22nd place. 

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