You’ve probably not failed to notice ‘The Education State’ registration plates on Victorian cars over the past decade, so it’s a good thing that the University of Melbourne has just been named as the best university in Australia, by virtue of placing 19th in the recently-released 2026 QS World University Rankings. It’s one of three Australian universities in the world’s top 25, alongside the University of New South Wales (just behind in 20th place), and the University of Sydney, at #25, and puts Melbourne’s top university ahead of the likes of American powerhouses Yale and Princeton.
But whilst this is the good news, there’s some concern behind it – as all three universities fell from their 2025 rankings, amongst the nearly 70% of ranked Australian universities which dropped in the 2026 rankings. So, whilst the University of Melbourne can celebrate being number one in the country, the drop from #13 last year to #19 this year is part of a broader trend which saw 25 out of the 36 Australian universities in the rankings decline from last year’s positions.
Amongst Australia’s top ten, only fellow Melbourne spot Monash University improved its ranking, moving from #37 to #36 to remain the fifth-highest ranked Australian university. Meanwhile, the newly-created Adelaide University, which will open in 2026, jumped into Australia’s top ten by scoring 82nd place in its first ever QS World University Rankings.
The rankings were calculated across five categories – reputation, teaching and learning, research impact, internationalism, and sustainability – with a handful of subcategories amongst those. The University of Melbourne’s overall score of 90.8 included strong performances for academic reputation, sustainability, and the quality of international research. Australia’s overall drop, as noted by the Guardian, owed more to a combination of decreased employer reputation and academic reputation, and came in a year where Asian universities rose up the rankings.
Still, Australia’s overall performance remains relatively healthy; with six universities in the top 50, the nation has more top performers here than the likes of Canada (three of the top 50) and mainland China (five of the top 50), and just one fewer than the UK. You can see the full rankings here, led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at #1.
