There is no Italian university among the top one hundred in the world, but there are at least 42 if we consider the top thousand . And we have to go down to 153rd place to find the first Italian university, which this year is confirmed as La Sapienza University of Rome .

This is what emerges from the 2026 World University Rankings, published today by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, an independent organization that maintains one of the most important rankings in the sector.

The ranking considers the best 1000 universities in the world out of over 2500 surveyed: American universities occupy eight of the top 10 positions worldwide and the entire podium: Harvard confirms its first place, followed by Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology .

The University of Cambridge comes in fourth, while the University of California, Berkeley rounds out the global top five. The United Kingdom boasts two universities in the top 10 (Cambridge and Oxford). Continental Europe is led by the University of Paris-Saclay in 13th place, followed by the ETH Zurich in 19th.

There are six evaluation parameters , including Nobel Prizes and “Fields” Medals of former students or researchers, the number of researchers cited according to Clarivate Analytics, and publications in the journals Nature and Science.

In the entire ranking, China boasts 234 universities among the top 1,000 in the world , the highest number of any country, followed by the United States with 187. The United Kingdom has 57, Germany 51, and Italy, precisely, 42.

Among these is the University of Cagliari , which ranks between 34th and 37th in the Italian rankings and between 801st and 900th in the world rankings. The University of Sassari is absent from the rankings.

(Unioneonline/AD)

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