Berkeley Claims Top Ranking Among Public Universities

UC Berkeley has again been named the country’s top public university, in U.S. News & World Report’s 2026 Best Global Universities rankings. The university placed No. 7 overall among more than 2,250 research institutions worldwide. The global rankings evaluate universities across more than 100 countries on 13 metrics, including global and research reputation and the volume of scholarly papers.

This year, Berkeley earned top-three national recognition in seven subject areas — environment/ecology, ecology, water resources, physics, computer science, chemistry, and engineering — and placed in the top five nationally across 17 subjects in total. Berkeley also was atop the listings again from Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and Times Higher Education in the past year.