China has overtaken India arsenic the most-represented determination successful the QS World University Rankings: Asia 2026, according to the rankings released this week. While India added 132 universities and institutes to the database this year, taking its tally to a grounds precocious of 294, China added 259 institutions, bringing its full to 394.
In the past 2 editions, India had the highest fig of universities and institutes successful the rankings, up of China. This year, a full of 1,526 universities were ranked, of which 557 are caller entries.
Seven Indian institutions diagnostic successful the apical 100, with the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, ranked highest astatine 59, followed by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), and the IITs successful Madras, Bombay, Kharagpur, and Kanpur, on with the University of Delhi. China, meanwhile, has 25 universities successful the apical 100, Japan 15, and South Korea 12.
While India retained the aforesaid fig of institutes successful the apical 100 arsenic past year, their rankings declined. IIT Delhi, for instance, slipped from 44 successful the 2025 rankings to 59 this year. The University of Delhi fell from 81 to 95, IISc from 62 to 64, IIT Madras from 56 to 70, IIT Bombay from 48 to 71, IIT Kanpur from 67 to 77, and IIT Kharagpur from 60 to 77.
The QS World University Rankings: Asia measure institutions based connected 11 indicators tailored to bespeak determination contexts. Although the implicit scores of Indian universities improved compared with past year, their comparative rankings dropped owed to stronger performances by different countries.
The apical 10 positions successful the 2026 rankings were dominated by universities from Hong Kong, Singapore, and China. A connection from QS said 36 Indian universities improved their rankings, 16 maintained their positions, and 105 declined.
India, however, led the ‘Papers per Faculty’ indicator, with 5 universities among Asia’s apical 10 and 28 among the apical 50, much than treble China’s number (two successful the apical 10 and 14 successful the apical 50). India besides had 46 universities successful the apical 100 for ‘Papers per Faculty’ and 45 successful the apical 100 for ‘Staff with PhD’, portion South Korea followed with 15.
Other indicators utilized by the London-based QS see citations per paper, leader reputation, faculty-student ratio, planetary probe network, and planetary pupil and module ratios.
Sharing the rankings connected Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “Glad to spot a grounds summation successful the fig of Indian universities successful the QS Asia University Rankings implicit the past decade. Our authorities is committed to ensuring prime acquisition for our youth, with a absorption connected probe and innovation. We are besides gathering organization capacities successful this assemblage by enabling much acquisition institutions crossed India.”
In its connection releasing the 2026 rankings, QS said, “While the large 4 destinations, the U.K., the U.S., Australia, and Canada, person dominated the planetary survey marketplace successful erstwhile years, caller policies restricting pupil flows mean that Asian destinations are becoming progressively popular, peculiarly successful East and South-East Asian countries similar China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong (SAR), and Singapore.”
It added that India “continues to beryllium a salient root market”, portion besides making efforts to pull planetary students to its universities.

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