La Laguna remains among the thousand best universities in the world, but no longer ULPGC

Thirty Spanish universities, including that of La Laguna, are among the thousand best in the world according to the Shanghai 2026 list, compared to 36 last year, as eight have fallen out compared to 2025, one of them being Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC).

Also fallen out of the classification, the most famous university ranking, published this Saturday, are those of Cantabria, Baleares, Jaén, Lleida, Carlos III de Madrid, Cádiz, Córdoba and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

The University of Valladolid has returned to be part of this edition, after disappearing from the list last year.

Some of these university centers improve their position and others worsen it compared to the world ranking of 2025, in which the University of Barcelona maintains its leadership, followed by the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Complutense, Autonomous University of Madrid and Granada.

Spain is in 23rd place in the country list, which breaks down the number of universities in each ranking bracket: one among the first 200; three among the 300; seven among the 400; 12 among the 500, and 30 among the 1,000.

Once again, no Spanish university appears among the top hundred positioned in the list dominated by the USA.

The classification, which has been carried out among more than 2,500 higher education institutions, is ordered by brackets, in which they are positioned in alphabetical order according to their English initials.

The ULL, in the 701-800 bracket of the best

In the specific case of the University of La Laguna, it repeats in the 701-800 interval, and is positioned in the 15-18 interval among Spanish universities, improving its relative position with respect to 2025, when it was around 20th nationally.

In a statement, the ULL details that among the indicators used by the Shanghai ranking, the one for publications in Nature and Science stands out especially, in which the University of La Laguna obtains 10.8 points and is positioned in seventh place among Spanish universities.

The ULL occupies the twenty-fourth national position in volume of indexed publications (PUB) and the eleventh in per capita performance (PCP).

The University of Barcelona, leader of the Spanish list

This year, the ranking of Spanish educational centers has undergone some changes compared to the previous one, but the University of Barcelona maintains the status of the previous two years by being among the top 200 positions, its best classification.

Among the top ten, the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Complutense University both improve their ranges (to the 201-300 range of the best), while in the 301-400 bracket, the Autonomous University of Madrid, Granada, and the Basque Country remain, with the exception of the University of Valencia, which has dropped to this range from last year's 201-300.

Of this Spanish 'Top 10', in the 401-500 range are the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Pompeu Fabra University - which has dropped from the 301-400 range - and the University of Navarra, which has risen from the 501-600 range.

Of the total, thirteen are in the same range, six improve it, and nine worsen it, with the most notable drop being for the University of Salamanca, from 501-600 to 801-900.

Those that improve are the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Complutense University, Navarra University, Zaragoza University, Polytechnic University of Madrid, and Jaume I University, compared to those that worsen, such as the University of Valencia, Pompeu Fabra University, Murcia University, Alcalá University, Oviedo University, Salamanca University, Rovira i Virgili University, Alicante University, and Vigo University.

Those that remain in the same range are the University of Barcelona, Autonomous University of Madrid, Granada University, Basque Country University, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Seville University, Santiago de Compostela University, Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Extremadura University, La Laguna University, Málaga University, Castilla-La Mancha University, and Girona University.

Harvard at the top once again

The list is headed, as it was last year, by Harvard University, for 24 consecutive years, Stanford University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and completing the top ten are Cambridge, Berkeley, Princeton, Oxford, Columbia, the University of Chicago, and Caltech.

At the European level, the United Kingdom has 57, Germany 51, Italy 42, France 27, the Netherlands 13, Sweden 12, Austria 11, Switzerland 9, Belgium 8, and Denmark 6, among others.

In continental Europe, Paris-Saclay is the first and remains the leader in 13th place, followed by ETH Zurich, in 19th place.

The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), better known as the Shanghai ranking, has been published since 2003 and is updated annually by Jiao Tong University, located in that same Chinese city.

The list analyzes six indicators: number of alumni who have won a Nobel Prize or Fields Medal; professors with Nobel Prizes or Fields Medals; citations of researchers; articles in Nature and Science; per capita academic performance; and papers in the Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Science Citation Index.