Europe's highest ranked universities: Which countries have performed the best in the Global Top 100?

In 2023, 36 of the Global Top 100 universities will be in Europe. This is a significant increase from 28 universities since the Times Higher Education’s 2011 World University Rankings report was released.

However, it is not the best performance in the last 13 years, as European countries had 42 universities in the Global Top 100 list in 2016.

Apart from three British universities, namely the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, and Imperial College London (ICL), only ETH Zurich of Switzerland has ranked in the Top 10 in the last 13 years.

How have the best-ranking universities changed in Europe in the last decade and which European countries are doing well in terms of best-ranking universities?

How is the Times' Global Top 100 decided?

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings is a popular listing published annually, which in 2023 includes 1,799 universities from 104 countries and regions.

The list is prepared based on 13 indicators that measure an institution’s performance across four areas: teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and international outlook.

Being in the Global Top 10 is very prestigious for leading universities and, unsurprisingly, universities in the United States and the United Kingdom dominate the Top 10 rankings.

Only 13 different universities have succeeded in gaining Global Top 10 rankings since 2011. Four of them are in Europe whereas the other nine are in the US.

The University of Oxford was named the world’s top university for the seventh consecutive year in the 2023 Times Higher Education rankings.

The University of Cambridge was also in the Global Top 10 for that whole time period, whereas ICL managed to remain on the list for 11 years.

Switzerland’s ETH Zurich ranked ninth in 2016