UC Berkeley rated No. 1 public university in North America by Times Higher Education
In its global rankings, the British magazine ranked Berkeley as the third-best public institution in the world, and the ninth-best university overall.
Edward Lempinen/UC Berkeley
October 8, 2025
Times Higher Education has named UC Berkeley the top public university in North America for 2026, and the ninth-best university in the world.
The ranking, announced today (Wednesday, Oct. 8), adds to a remarkable run: The campus in recent weeks has been named the No. 1 public university in the country by U.S. News & World Report, the Wall Street Journal and Forbes. Earlier this year, U.S. News gave Berkeley graduate programs elite scores in disciplines ranging from the social sciences and engineering to computer science and business.
And last month, the 2025 PitchBook university rankings placed Berkeley in the top spot for the third year in a row, finding that its graduates have established more venture-backed companies than undergraduate alumni from any other university in the world.
“We are honored to once again be recognized as one of the world’s best universities, and the top public university in North America,” said Chancellor Rich Lyons. “The data affirm the excellence and impact of our extraordinary research enterprise and the extent to which discoveries on the Berkeley campus advance the health, well-being and prosperity of people around the world. So, too, do those data confirm all that Berkeley does as a powerful engine of economic mobility, and a provider of affordable world-class education, accessible to all. That is how and why we lift more students further up the economic ladder than any other university.”
Times Higher Education, a U.K.-based publication, created its rankings based on assessment of 2,191 colleges and universities in 115 countries and territories worldwide. Its analysis focuses on five sectors: teaching, the research environment, research quality, international outlook and industry, including patents and income.
Berkeley has been the publication’s top public university in the U.S. for 10 of the past 11 years.
This year, it fell one position, to ninth, in the overall global rankings, swapping places with Imperial College London. Among public universities worldwide, Times Higher Education ranked Berkeley third, behind only the University of Cambridge and Imperial College, both in the U.K.
The magazine’s global top 10, including both private and public universities, are: University of Oxford (1); Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2); Princeton University (t-3); Cambridge (t-3); Harvard University (t-5); Stanford University (t-5); California Institute of Technology (7); Imperial College London (8); UC Berkeley (9); and Yale University (10).