India’s top-ranked universities have taken a bit of a back seat in the latest QS Asia University Rankings 2026, with premier institutes like IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) seeing a drop in their positions.
Within the top seven Indian universities that featured on the top 100 list, all institutes have taken a tumble this year, including IIT Delhi which slipped 15 positions to rank at #59.
All seven IITs – Delhi, Bombay, Madras, Kharagpur, Kanpur, Roorkee and Guwahati – that feature in the top 150 list have slipped in comparison to the previous year. In contrast, the newer IITs like IIT BHU Varanasi (#237), IIT Hyderabad (#270) and IIT Gandhinagar (#300) have improved their rankings.
India has, however, added 137 universities to the list, taking the tally of ranked institutions to 294. Six universities dropped out of the rankings, including Jaypee University of Information Technology, GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, University of Agricultural Sciences (Bangalore) and Mangalore University.
On the other hand, institutes from Singapore, China and Hong Kong have moved up in the league tables. China, for example, has 24 universities ranked in top 100 this time, up from 22 last year. China has also seen the addition of 261 universities in the rankings – the highest for any of the 26 countries in the list – and the country now has 395 ranked universities.
In the current edition, QS has featured 1,529 universities, significantly higher than last year when just 984 universities were ranked. A QS spokesperson told FE that the decision to expand the list is in recognition of the growing influence of Asia on the global higher education scene.
Despite a sharp fall in rankings, the data show that India has become Asia’s research powerhouse, leading the region in productivity and faculty strength. In papers per faculty metric, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology (West Bengal) has ranked #1 in Asia. Also, five Indian universities have featured in Asia’s top 10 for research productivity, and 28 in the top 50, which is more than double of China’s count.
Jessica Turner, CEO, QS, said: “India’s higher education transformation is now visible in the data – a system that’s globally relevant and locally empowering”. Meanwhile, the University of Hong Kong has moved up to the top slot within Asia, whereas Peking University in China slipped to the #2 spot. As per the rankings, Hong Kong has five universities within the top 10 list followed by China (3 universities) and Singapore (2).
The QS ranked the institutions on nine parameters, including academic reputation, citations per faculty, employer reputation, faculty-student ratio, international faculty ratio, international student diversity, sustainability and others.