In the world’s elite university ranking systems, the intrigue always revolves around whether Oxford will retain its leadership or relinquish it to Cambridge, MIT and Harvard. If at all they fall into this elite, Bulgarian higher education institutions are usually at the bottom of the rankings and very little visible to the world, with surprising hits such as the Department of English and American Studies at SU. The purpose of these rating systems is to guide students to where they will receive the best training and best fulfillment. However, the market and reputation in our country do not go hand in hand – our universities are strong in one thing, but sell something completely different. This is shown by the two most prestigious ratings in the world, which updated their data in recent weeks – Times Higher Education and QS. QS provided “Now” with the data for Europe for 2026, which came out literally this week.
9 of our universities in the top 1000
QS ranks 950 educational institutions in Europe according to 12 criteria, in which implementation after graduation has a large weight. 42 countries and territories on the continent are included in their rating.
Bulgaria is discovered after the first 300, as traditionally our most visible university to the world is SU “St. Kliment Ohridski”. It is down from 2025, when it was 267th. It is now 313th in the company of little-known universities from the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Spain and Germany. Even just for our Eastern Europe region, our oldest higher education institution fails to make the Top 20 and is ranked 24th. Its overall score was 38.2 points out of 100 for Oxford and 98.3 for the Swiss Institute of Technology ETH Zurich.
Although we are far from visibility, there is still good news for Bulgaria in the rating – our universities included in it are increasing. The Technical University enters the ranking for the first time in the group 551-560. NBU debuted in the 701-900 group. In the same group is Plovdiv University “Paisiy Hilendarski”, which in last year’s edition was higher (551-600). Thrace University also lowers its position, and our participation in this group ends with Veliko Tarnovo University. In the 901+ group we find Burgas Free University, Todor Kableshkov Higher School of Transport and Varna Free University.
Big reputation, not so much realization
It is an interesting fact that SU has earned a place in a negative ranking in the rating – the large discrepancies between reputation among employers and realization of students. Such a discrepancy is commented on as a need to promote more intensively the qualities of the graduates in order to take advantage of the high reputation among employers.
In this regard, Sofia University is among 25 higher education institutions with a very large difference between reputation and realization. The most drastic difference is the University of Belgrade, and the group includes other universities from the region, but also the University of Copenhagen, the University of Helsinki, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the University of Stockholm and others, including several universities of the leader in the ranking Great Britain.
Only one medical university in the rankings
As you can see, there is no Bulgarian medical university in QS. The Times Higher Education selection is a bit different. In addition to the University of Sofia, the 2026 edition of this rating also includes the Technical University-Sofia, the Medical University-Sofia, the University of Thrace in Stara Zagora and the University of Plovdiv, and their places are far behind, and once again the humanitarian studies of the University of Sofia is ranked in the highest position.
At the same time, it is medicine that our universities sell best around the world. More than half – 59% – of all foreign students in the country study in only two fields – medicine (49.2%) and dentistry (9.9%), according to the National Map of Higher Education for 2025. Medicine is the only professional field in which foreign students predominate – 58.6% compared to 41.4% of Bulgarian students. In dentistry, foreign students are 47.8%, in veterinary medicine – 32.5%, and in pharmacy – 15.9%. Foreign students account for more than 10% in the fields of tourism, transport, music and dance, and theory and management of education.
In terms of the share of foreign students, Bulgaria already slightly exceeds the average level in the EU, which for 2023 is 8.4%. In the Balkans, our country is among the leaders in the share of foreign students after North Macedonia with 10.6% foreign students and ahead of Romania, Serbia, Turkey, Croatia, Greece and Albania, which suggests that it manages to make up for the lack of competitiveness in the academic sphere with accessibility and lower education costs.
What we need to know about Times Higher Education 2026
– Oxford tops the rating again – for the tenth time in a row;
– It is the fastest growing university Sunway in Malaysia, which climbs 120 places in the rating;
– Princeton climbs to third place and this is its best performance to date;
– China now has five universities in the Top40, up from three last year;
– India is now second only to the US in terms of ranked universities, for the first time.
What we need to know about QS Europe 2026
– There are 7 British, two Swiss and one French university in the Top 10. This year’s line-up is Oxford, ETH Zurich, Imperial College-London, UCL-London, Cambridge, University of Edinburgh, King’s College-London, France’s Université PSL, University of Manchester and EPFL – Université Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne;
– the ranking in the 11-20 group is quite dynamic, as there is no university here that has kept its last year’s rating. Delft University of Technology improves significantly (from 11th to 15th), as do the University of Munich and the University of Warwick, which rise to 17th place from 21st and 22nd;
– Ireland has the most improved positions, with 87.5% of its ranked universities moving up;
– Western Europe has the most ranked universities – 227, with 39.2% of higher education institutions in its region improving their rating;
– Istanbul is the most strongly represented metropolitan area with 29 ranked universities;
– Baku Engineering University has the most notable improvement, climbing 96 positions to 395th place;
– Over 290 universities enter the ranking for the first time, the highest of which is City St George’s at the University of London, which enters in 127th position;
– In Eastern Europe, the best universities are in the Czech Republic and Poland – Charles University in the Czech Republic (92), Warsaw University (113), Jagiellonian University (126), Masaryk University (156) and the Technical University in Prague.
date:2026-02-10 14:24:00