UCT remains South Africa’s top university in latest ShanghaiRanking

The University of Cape Town (UCT) remains South Africa's leading university in the latest Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), despite moving from 258th to 286th globally in the 2026 edition. 

Published annually by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, ARWU is one of the world’s most research-intensive university rankings. More than 2 500 universities are assessed, with the top 1 000 published. Its methodology focuses heavily on research achievements and research output, using six indicators: alumni and staff who have won Nobel Prizes or Fields Medals, Highly Cited Researchers, papers published in Nature and Science, Web of Science-indexed publications, and per-capita academic performance. 

UCT’s position of 286th globally and first in South Africa means that the university remains firmly among the world’s leading research-intensive institutions. The 2026 result nevertheless represents a 28-place movement from UCT’s 258th position in 2025. 

Understanding the movement 

A detailed analysis of UCT’s ARWU performance shows that the change in ranking was not driven by declines across all indicators. 

Of ARWU’s six measures, UCT’s score for Highly Cited Researchers (HiCi) increased from 2.9 in 2025 to 3.3 in 2026, an improvement of 0.4 points. UCT’s Alumni score remained unchanged at 1.6, while its Award score remained at zero. The three indicators that moved down were Nature and Science publications, Web of Science-indexed publications and per-capita academic performance. 

The largest change was in PUB, ARWU’s measure of papers indexed in the Science Citation Index-Expanded and Social Science Citation Index in Web of Science. UCT’s PUB score moved from 7.3 to 6.7. The N&S score, measuring research articles in Nature and Science, moved from 2.8 to 2.7, while the Per Capita Performance (PCP) score moved from 1.8 to 1.7. 

“Rankings provide useful external benchmarks, but each ranking tells us something different about a university.” 

These changes need to be interpreted carefully. ARWU scores are relative scores, not simple counts of publications. ShanghaiRanking explains that the highest-performing university on each indicator is assigned a score of 100, with other universities’ scores calculated relative to that benchmark, before the indicators are weighted to produce the overall score. Consequently, a movement in an indicator score does not necessarily mean that UCT’s absolute research output fell by the same proportion – or even that its absolute output fell at all. It means that the university’s performance on that measure was lower relative to the benchmark used by ARWU. 

The evidence indicates that UCT’s research quality and productivity have remained stable overall. The data shows a mixed indicator performance, with the largest negative movement occurring in the publication-volume measure and the clearest positive movement occurring in Highly Cited Researchers. 

The data periods also change 

Another important consideration is that ARWU does not compare precisely the same underlying data in successive editions. 

For ARWU 2026, the PUB indicator uses publications from 2025, whereas the 2025 edition used publications from 2024. The N&S indicator uses a five-year window: 2021–2025 in ARWU 2026, compared with 2020–2024 in ARWU 2025. The HiCi indicator uses the 2025 Highly Cited Researchers data in the 2026 edition, compared with the 2024 data in the previous edition. 

This matters because the movement in the N&S indicator, for example, reflects a rolling five-year window rather than simply the number of papers published in one year. Similarly, the PUB score reflects one year’s indexed publication output and its position relative to the global benchmark. 

ARWU also applies specific rules to the N&S indicator: only articles are counted, and the contribution attributed to a university depends on the order and role of its authorship affiliation. A corresponding-author affiliation receives 100% weighting, followed by lower weights for first, subsequent and other affiliations. 

ARWU’s analysis does not provide sufficient information to attribute the change in PUB or N&S to any single underlying factor. It would therefore be premature to conclude that the movement reflects a decline in the absolute number or quality of UCT publications. 

 A strong performance in Highly Cited Researchers 

The improvement in UCT’s score for the Highly Cited Researchers indicator is particularly noteworthy. 

HiCi is one of ARWU’s six indicators and carries a 20% weighting. It counts Highly Cited Researchers selected by Clarivate, with only their primary institutional affiliations taken into account. UCT’s score increased from 2.9 to 3.3 in 2026. In 2025, Clarivate recognised the late Emeritus Professor William Bond from the Department of Biological Sciences, Emerita Professor Estelle Lambert, Professor Crick Lund, and Professor Darren Martin (all from the Faculty of Health Sciences) on their Highly Cited Researchers list. 

The ARWU score improvement provides evidence that UCT continues to have strong international research visibility among highly cited scholars, even as some publication-related measures have weakened relative to the ARWU benchmark. 

“The ARWU result gives us valuable information about our research performance relative to some of the world’s strongest research-intensive universities.” 

UCT’s strongest individual ARWU indicator remains Alumni, for which it ranks 104th globally. The detailed analysis places UCT in the highest quartile for this indicator among universities ranked between 201st and 300th overall. By contrast, its per-capita academic performance is its weakest relative indicator. UCT’s PCP score declined modestly from 1.8 to 1.7. PCP is not an independent measure: ARWU calculates it from the weighted scores of the other five indicators relative to the number of full-time-equivalent academic staff. The decline, therefore, reflects the combined effect of changes in UCT’s performance across those indicators and the denominator used by ARWU. In UCT’s case, the decline in the PUB and N&S scores would place downward pressure on PCP, partly offset by the improvement in HiCi. However, the publicly available ARWU information does not provide sufficient detail to determine how much of the 0.1-point PCP movement arose from the numerator versus the academic-staff denominator. 

ARWU is one lens on UCT’s research performance 

The ARWU result should also be considered alongside UCT’s performance in other major international rankings, which use substantially different methodologies. 

In the QS World University Rankings 2027, released in June 2026, UCT ranked 184th globally and first in Africa, remaining in the global top 200 for the fourth consecutive year. 

In the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2026, UCT ranked 164th globally, placing it in the world’s top 7.5% of ranked universities and retaining its position as Africa’s highest-ranked university. THE also recorded particularly strong performance by UCT in its research measures: the university’s research-quality pillar ranked 153rd globally, up from 183rd the previous year, while its research-environment ranking improved from 188th to 166th. 

“We should take seriously the areas where the data point to opportunities for improvement, while recognising the continued strength and international impact of UCT’s research community.”

The latest Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) 2026 placed UCT 276th globally, in the top 1.3% of the 21 291 institutions assessed. UCT ranked second in both Africa and South Africa, one place below the University of the Witwatersrand. Its overall CWUR score remained unchanged at 77.4 from 2025, while its Education ranking improved three places to 183rd. 

The differing results underline an important point: global university rankings measure different aspects of institutional performance. ARWU is particularly concentrated on research achievements, highly cited researchers and publication output; QS incorporates measures including academic reputation, research impact and internationalisation; THE assesses teaching, research environment, research quality, international outlook and industry; and CWUR uses outcome-based measures covering education, employability, faculty distinction and research. 

Understanding the result  

The 2026 ARWU result provides useful information for UCT’s ongoing efforts to strengthen its research ecosystem. The movement in the PUB, N&S and PCP indicators points to areas that warrant closer analysis, particularly research publication performance and research productivity relative to academic staff numbers. 

At the same time, the result should not be interpreted as evidence of a broad-based decline in UCT’s research performance. The university has improved its Highly Cited Researchers score, retained a particularly strong Alumni indicator, and continues to perform strongly in other major global rankings. 

“Rankings provide useful external benchmarks, but each ranking tells us something different about a university,” said Professor Mosa Moshabela, UCT’s vice-chancellor. “The ARWU result gives us valuable information about our research performance relative to some of the world’s strongest research-intensive universities. We should take seriously the areas where the data points to opportunities for improvement, while recognising the continued strength and international impact of UCT’s research community.” 

UCT will continue to strengthen the research environment that enables academics and researchers to produce high-quality, internationally visible scholarship, while ensuring that this research contributes to the university’s broader mission of creating knowledge and impact for South Africa, Africa and the world.