Find your university in the Arab University Rankings 2026

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates continue to dominate the ����Vlog Arab University Rankings, as the two countries battle for educational dominance in the Middle East.

The countries make up more than three-quarters of the top 20, with nine Saudi Arabian universities and seven UAE institutions featuring in this elite group. This is up from five Saudi and four UAE universities in the top 20 in last year’s rankings.

�����ܻ徱’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), a postgraduate-only institution, retains its position at the top spot for a record third year in a row, while the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) holds on to second place. Qatar University completes the top three, as one of only two universities in the top 10 that is outside Saudi and the UAE. 

Arab University Rankings 2026: top 10

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Note: the previous ranking was named the 2024 edition, but no years have been skipped since the inaugural Arab University Rankings in 2021.

Significant changes to the methodology for the Arab ranking, which this year has been brought in line with that of the overall World University Rankings, mean it is difficult to make year-on-year comparisons when it comes to university and country performance. However, the increasing levels of participation from many Arab world countries is itself a striking trend.   

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Iraq has the highest number of universities in the ranking at 57 – a figure that has risen significantly, from 45 last year and from just 16 in the first edition of the Arab ranking in 2021. Its top-ranked institution – University of Technology, Iraq – stands at 80th place.

Egypt is next in the country roll-call with 47 institutions in the table, led by Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST) at 28th, while Algeria has 42 representatives, with its highest-placed institutions, University of El Oued, Université d’Ain Témouchent and the Higher National School of Renewable Energies, Environment & Sustainable Development, all in the 151-175 band.

Overall, Saudi Arabia has 34 universities in the ranking – the same number as last year, but a 55 per cent increase since the rankings began – and all but two of these feature in the top 100. Its institutions score particularly strongly for their research quality and internationalism.

Higher education in Saudi Arabia has gained greater importance and significant investment following the publication of its strategy in 2016, which outlined the country’s strategic priorities as it looked to diversify away from oil – the main driver of its economy. With significant financial resources to build up its educational reputation, the strategy outlined its ambition to have “at least five” institutions among the top 200 universities in international rankings, as well as to ensure “higher education outcomes are in line with the requirements of [the] job market”.

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Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Michael Arthur, the former president and provost of UCL, in 2018 claimed that the country’s growth and investment in higher education meant that Saudi Arabia had the capabilities to replicate the levels of success seen by rankings-heavyweight China, which has raised its global reputation and rankings positions over recent decades.

“If you look at China over the past 20 years and you look at its higher education system, they’ve shown what can be done with careful and thoughtful strategic approaches and with appropriate levels of funding,” he told a THE event.

“I would imagine that the same will happen, and is already happening, in the Middle East, and particularly here in Saudi Arabia.”

But with just five years to go until 2030, how realistic are Saudi Arabia’s ambitions? 

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Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a fellow for the Middle East at Rice University, said that research in Saudi had “taken off” since the implementation of Vision 2030, with the Saudi universities in the top 20 of the Arab ranking scoring an average of 90 out of 100 in the research quality pillar. The country had been “undergoing a strategic transformation to try and realign research into supporting Vision 2030”, he said, adding that KAUST was internationally renowned for science and innovation research.

But he noted that the country’s strategic focus on higher education began before this latest strategy. KAUST was founded in 2009 with a $10 billion (£6.4 billion) endowment from King Abdullah in 2007, with the aim of reviving science research in the Islamic world. The King Abdullah Scholarship Program, meanwhile, was established in 2005 and was the largest scholarship initiative in its history, providing thousands of Saudi students with opportunities to study abroad.

However, spending on higher education has drastically increased in Saudi in recent years, and the nation leads the Gulf Cooperation Council countries in government spending on education. In its 2023 budget, , with of it dedicated to higher education and technical and vocational training. This increased to SR191 billion in 2024. 

Cameron Mirza, chief of party at the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), a nonprofit organisation specialising in global education and development, said this investment has been about Saudi Arabia “moving away from the reliance on oil to become more innovative”.

“Saudi is really gearing itself up to become an innovative, dynamic and entrepreneurial economy, which really needs to be fuelled by a high-performing HE system,” he said.

But the country is still some way off its ambition of propelling five universities to the top 200 of global rankings, with just one university in this cohort of the latest THE World University Rankings: KFUPM. Universities are only eligible for inclusion in WUR if they teach undergraduates, which excludes KAUST.

Sam Armenta Butt, senior data scientist at THE, said that while Saudi Arabia is on an “upward trajectory” in rankings performance, “it looks like a significant jump would need to be made for it to match China”.

He noted that China has long had “significantly more” institutions in the global rankings: “even in 2016, they already had 37 institutions in the rankings, verses 31 for Saudi Arabia now”, and the ranking has more than doubled in size during that period.

“In 2016, China had two institutions (Peking University and Tsinghua University) in the top 50, whereas now the highest-ranked Saudi institution is around 180,” he added, noting that Saudi performs relatively poorly in the teaching pillar, and while its universities’ levels of institutional income are high, its research and industry income levels are still average.

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Distribution of ranked universities in Saudi Arabia v China

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THE World University Rankings 2026

Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at the University of Oxford, said that for more Saudi universities to climb up the rankings the importance of higher education needed to be “embedded in the society and necessary to families and the economy”.

Until �����ܻ徱’s economy is reliant on graduate skills, and families are not just “living largely off the oil and gas revenue, directly or indirectly”, its universities will struggle to have the same impact, he said. Comparatively in China and Singapore, which has also seen a rapid growth of its university sector, “that aspiration for education is spread right down to every household in rural society”.

“It’s a completely different world in that sense to Saudi Arabia. So, it’s not surprising [China] gets so much value from its investment in education because people are very receptive to it…It’s got to matter if people are educated or not.”

Meanwhile, IREX’s Mirza noted that Saudi has historically relied on foreign lecturers to fill its academic posts – some 42 per cent of academics in the country’s universities were foreign, according to 2014 data – which prompted the government to encourage the “Saudisation” of higher education in 2017. More talent pipelines were needed to ensure a flow of domestic faculty members, he said, and to ensure the country’s university sector was “sustainable beyond 2030”.

However, the relative newness of the country’s higher education system – its oldest university was founded in 1957 – had given it an advantage in some areas of research, like artificial intelligence, he said. And the links between the country’s industry and universities “are cutting edge”, he added, with �����ܻ徱’s state oil firm, Aramco, and KFUPM undertaking joint research, courses and internship programmes, for example.

Saudi scores particularly highly on its links with industry in the Arab rankings, with its institutions in the top 20 scoring an average of 67.5 out of 100 in the industry pillar, compared with an average of 45.7 for UAE universities in the top 20.

Meanwhile, of the universities outside of these countries in the top 20, Qatar University scores 79.1 for industry, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Morocco scores 56.2, the Lebanese American University scores 32, while Ahlia University in Bahrain scores 16.8.

While Mirza acknowledged that Saudi was not yet “in the top tier” of institutions for research, he said “they’re making good progress” and the country should be “given credit” for the rise of its higher education reputation.

“It’s a fairly new system which does lend itself to being more nimble and agile compared to some of the institutions in the West, which have hundreds, if not thousands of years of legacy and are quite slow to move.”

Saudi Arabia is also “a small country,” he said. “China has a population of over a billion people. �����ܻ徱’s population is about [35 million] people. Given the size of the country and how relatively new their HE system is, I think they’re probably punching above their weight.”

One of the most significant higher education policy developments in China in recent decades has been the move to allow foreign universities to establish campuses in the country. The University of Nottingham Ningbo campus was the first international branch campus in 2004, and there are now 47 such outposts across China – which have helped boost internationalisation, attract talent and investment and contribute to “brain gain” by reducing the need for Chinese students to study abroad (although internationalisation is still the weakest link for China in the rankings).

Saudi Arabia took similar steps to open itself up to foreign partnerships and branch campuses last year, with the nation approving foreign investor licences for five international universities, including Arizona State University, University of Wollongong, University of Strathclyde, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences and IE University – although none have yet opened. 

Will this improve the quality of higher education in Saudi?

Mirza said attracting more international partnerships and branch campuses was “a big opportunity”, while Rice’s Coates Ulrichsen noted that Saudi could be looking to emulate the success of other countries in the Gulf, primarily the UAE and Qatar, which already host several international branch campuses. The rankings data suggest that UAE and Qatar have more international higher education systems than Saudi Arabia, even when only examining their home institutions; the average international pillar score is 94 for the UAE’s 13 ranked institutions and 97 for Qatar’s two universities, compared with 80 for �����ܻ徱’s 34 representatives. However, compared with the global average, Saudi is strong in internationalism; it is also the only rankings pillar where it outperforms China.

Underpinning Saudi Arabia’s growth is the country’s vast monetary resources, said Oxford’s Marginson, which could prove particularly appealing to potential university partners in countries like the UK, where funding problems are plaguing its universities. While money itself doesn’t guarantee higher education success, “if it keeps coming in, of course, it will have an effect”, he said.

Marginson added that if Saudi can develop its societal and economic importance of higher education, “then the potential is pretty large”. However, “it’s not going to be the sort of thing you see happening in five years”, he cautioned, as these are “generational shifts”. 

“A lot rests on the shoulders of the current graduates and those of the previous 10 years going into positions of leadership and bringing forward the role of higher education and science. When that happens, you’ll see a lot of shifts and changes occur,” he predicted.

Overall, trying to compare Saudi and China is like “trying to compare apples and pears”, said Mirza, but that doesn’t take away from the Gulf country’s growth, he added.

“They’ve got momentum, and it’ll be interesting to see over the next decade how things progress. Their trajectory would suggest that they’re probably on track to break into that top tier of countries around the world that are really driving innovation…so yes, I imagine that we’ll see that translated into more Saudi universities being ranked in the top 500 in the world.”

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juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com