None of the Indian institutes get featured in the QS Asia University Rankings 2026; the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT Delhi) topped the chart among Indian institutes with Rank 59. The rankings of the premier institutes were also slipped in comparison to the last year- while IIT Delhi bagged the 44th position in 2025, this year, the institute's rank slipped 15 places to Rank 59, while IIT Bombay's rank has fallen to 23 places to 71st spot in 2026, last year the institute bagged Rank 48.
Only one Indian institute improved its ranking from last year, Chandigarh University, a private university bagged Rank 109 in the QS Asia University Rankings 2026, up from Rank 120 last year. Though all Indian institutes have improved their scores compared to last year, their rankings have dropped relative to other institutions in Asia.
The QS University Rankings was based on these following parameters- academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty-student ratio, international research network, citations per paper, papers per faculty, staff with PhD, international faculty, international students, and inbound and outbound exchange students.
The Indian institutes witnessed a decline in performance in these following metrics- citations per paper’ metric, faculty-student ratio, International student ratio.
Citations per paper
On citations per paper, the Indian institutes fared poorly- IIT Delhi bagged 31.5, IIT Bombay- 20, IIT Madras- 20.3, while Asia's best top 10 institutes have scored above 90s on this metric. “Declines or stagnation in this indicator are visible across the IITs…compared with stronger regional peers who are accelerating research collaborations and publication output,” QS said.
Faculty-student ratio
IIT Delhi has scored 40.9 in the Faculty-student ratio metric, IIT Kharagpur- 16.5; while the other top 10 institutes in the region have scored between 80 and 90.
International student ratio
IIT Roorkee just bagged a score of 12.3 in the International student ratio metric, IIT Kharagpur- 2.5, while the top 4 best global institutes scored a perfect 100 on this metric.
QS Asia University Rankings 2026: Top 10 Indian institutes
Rank 59: IIT Delhi
Rank 64: IISc Bangalore
Rank 70: IIT Madras
Rank 71: IIT Bombay
Rank 77: IIT Kanpur
Rank 77: IIT Kharagpur
Rank 114: IIT Roorkee
Rank 115: IIT Guwahati
Rank 156: Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore
Rank 206: Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal.
QS Asia University Rankings 2026: Top Ten
Rank 1: The University of Hong Kong
Rank 2: Peking University
Rank 3: Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Rank 3: National University of Singapore
Rank 5: Fudan University
Rank 6: The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Rank 7: City University of Hong Kong
Rank 7: The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Rank 9: Tsinghua University
Rank 10: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
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