University of Birmingham drops five places in Times Higher Education ranking for 2026

The University of Birmingham (UoB) has dropped five places in Times Higher Education’s 2026 ranking, placing at 98th.

It marks the second year the university has placed within the top 100 of higher education institutes worldwide.

Aston University ranked within the 400s in the 2026 Time Higher Education list, marking a drop from their prior ranking between 351-400th position.

The other Birmingham uni to make the list was Birmingham City University (BCU), who placed between 801-1000th on the ranking with a score between 35.5-38.9.

Despite dropping five places, UoB still managed to beat the University of Warwick, who placed 122nd on the list. A massive win considering the Complete University Guide ranked them higher than us a few months ago. I guess the rivalry continues.

via Korng Sok on Unsplash

So, how are the rankings decided?

The ranking is determined by five performance measures: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry, and international outlook. Each of these areas is then scored by a percentage, which is averaged out to provide an overall score for each university.

Whilst UoB ranked highly in terms of their research quality, industry, and international outlook, it seems their teaching and research environment let them down. Similarly, Aston and BCU scored poorly with teaching, research environment, and industry but excel in international outlook and perform well in research quality.

Unsurprisingly, Oxford took the top spot globally with a score of 98.2 (show-offs) but Cambridge was robbed of second place by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Instead, the university tied in third with another American university, Princeton.

The ranking also shared some key statistics surrounding each university such as number of full time students, number of students per staff, international students, female:male ratio.

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For those interested, UoB had a 56:44 ration of women to men, Aston had a 47:53 ration, whereas BCU had a drastic 62:38 ratio of women vastly outnumbering men.

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Featured images via Korng Sok and Shoeib Abolhassani on Unsplash, and Graham Taylor on Creative Commons.