Rankings: The 15 best universities in Sweden for 2025/2026
Photo by Ola Ericson/imagebank.sweden.se
Sweden has long held a reputation of being one of the most modern, advanced countries in Europe. With its unique blend of academic quality, a welcoming and open-minded society, and its remarkable quality of life, Sweden is among the most popular places for students who want to study abroad. No wonder that Sweden also regularly scores high in the Study.EU Country Ranking for International Students.
In the table below, you can see how universities in Sweden fare in different international rankings. Five of these institutions make it into the world’s top 100 almost every year: Karolinska Institute (a medical school), Uppsala University, Lund University, Stockholm University, and KTH Royal Institute of Technology. For a small country like Sweden, that is a remarkable score. And it is proof that university students who pursue a Bachelor or Master degree in Sweden have made a great choice for their academic and professional careers.
| University | QS Ranking 2026 | THE Ranking 2025 | ARWU Ranking 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lund University | 72 | 95 | 101 |
| KTH Royal Institute of Technology | 78 | 95 | 201 |
| Uppsala University | 93 | 130 | 88 |
| Stockholm University | 147 | 191 | 101 |
| Chalmers University of Technology | 165 | 201 | 401 |
| University of Gothenburg | 202 | 201 | 101 |
| Linköping University | 310 | 201 | 301 |
| Umeå University | 401 | 351 | 501 |
| Karolinska Institutet | – | 49 | 43 |
| Halmstad University | – | 1201 | – |
| SLU – Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences | – | 351 | 301 |
| Örebro University | – | 501 | 701 |
| J̦nk̦ping University | Р| 601 | Р|
| Stockholm School of Economics | – | – | 701 |
| Linnaeus University | – | – | 901 |
The QS World University Rankings are among the most important, most-referenced rankings. The QS ranking relies heavily on its academic survey, asking thousands of academics worldwide about the reputation of universities.
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings (or the THE Rankings for short) compile a wide range of statistics. Equal weight is put on teaching quality, research excellence, and research impact through citations (meaning how often a university’s research is referenced elsewhere).
The Academic Ranking of World Universities by Shanghai Jiao Tong University (often just Shanghai Ranking, or ARWU) focuses on research output and quality, for example measured by the number of published and cited scientific papers and the number of staff or alumni winning the Nobel Prize or Fields Medal.
Sweden is a popular country for international students: Its universities are among the best in the world, its people known to be friendly and welcoming, and students from the EU/EEA can study tuition-free. Swedish universities offer around 1,000 degree programmes taught entirely in English.
Read more about studying in Sweden
