U of T is Canada's top school in a new best universities ranking and other schools aren't close
There's a big gap in Canada's top three! 👀
University of Toronto sign. Right: Students at McGill University.
There is a new best universities ranking, and so many Canadian schools made the list.
But other schools in Canada didn't come close to the University of Toronto!
On October 9, 2025, Times Higher Education released the World University Rankings for 2026.
It's based on an analysis of almost 19 million research papers, 1.5 million votes in an academic reputation survey and institutional data on more than 3,000 universities worldwide.
There are more than 2,000 universities from 115 countries and territories.
For 2026, the University of Oxford has been named the best university in the world by this ranking.
It's followed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology in second, Princeton University and University of Cambridge tied for third, and Harvard University and Stanford University tied for fifth.
California Institute of Technology, Imperial College London, University of California, Berkeley and Yale University make up the rest of the top 10.
All of these schools are in the U.K. or the U.S., no other country or territory has schools in the top 10.
When it comes to Canadian schools, this ranking includes 34 universities in Canada.
The top Canadian university in the new ranking is the University of Toronto, coming in at 21st place overall.
You might expect the other big schools in Canada to be close to U of T, but they're not even close in the Times Higher Education ranking.
McGill University is in 41st place, and the University of British Columbia is in the 45th spot.
Those schools are 20 and 24 spots lower than U of T, respectively.
Then, McMaster University, tied for 116th, and the University of Alberta, 119th, round out Canada's top five.
Canada's top five post-secondary schools are followed by:
- Université de Montréal — 150th
- University of Waterloo — tied for 162nd
- University of Ottawa — tied for 187th
- University of Calgary — 200th
After that, these schools are further down the ranking:
- Western University
- Queen's University
- Simon Fraser University
- University of Victoria
- Dalhousie University
- University of Saskatchewan
- Université Laval
- University of Guelph
- York University
- Carleton University
- Memorial University of Newfoundland
- Université du Québec
- University of Manitoba
- University of Windsor
- Concordia University
- Toronto Metropolitan University
- University of Newbrunswick
- Ontario Tech University
- University of Regina
Then, Lakehead University, Brock University, St. Francis Xavier University, University of Northern British Columbia, Wilfred Laurier University, and University of Lethbridge rank lower than 1,000th for 2026.
This article's cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.