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

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

Coming in at 38th, it marks a marginal fall from 2025’s position of 36th.

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 compiled 2,191 universities across 115 countries and territories, providing a valuable guide for prospective students, academics and policymakers.

KCL scored the highest in its 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, it scored much lower in the teaching category at 64.2.

Each category that KCL was assessed on 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, which placed it 38th worldwide. 

KCL is a major research university. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, it was ranked 6th nationally in the “power ranking”, which looks at quality and quantity of research activity.

The Times Higher Education UK rankings for 2026 also ranked KCL above renowned Russell Group universities, including London School of Economics, the University of Manchester and the University of Bristol.

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The university also did well in other rankings this year. It placed 19th nationally in the Complete University Guide 2026, scored amongst the top five best UK universities in the QS world rankings, and was in the top 25 best UK universities in the Guardian’s 2026 rankings. 

Other universities that placed highly in the Times Higher Education rankings included Oxford. It 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, which ranked in 22nd place. 

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