Ranking for KTH
KTH performs consistently well in all various international university rankings that span different areas from research, education and sustainability.
What are university rankings?
They are lists that aim to assess the performance of universities in specific areas. Several organizations produce these rankings based on various methods and criteria such as student experience, internationalization, research output, or academic reputation. They are intended to provide an indication of the overall quality of universities, but several fields and specific subjects are additionally ranked.
None of these ranking tables can give the full picture of a university and the results can greatly vary between them, especially in regard to parameter choices. Anyway, they have been shown to influence student choices and institutional selection. This page presents the international rankings considered the most reliable and important internationally.
QS World University and Sustainability Rankings
Quacquarelli Symonds (QS)
is a for-profit provider with headquarters in London that has been publishing the QS World University Rankings since 2004.
KTH was ranked 74th among 1,500 universities worldwide in the 2025 QS World University Rankings released in June 2024. Nearly unchanged from the previous year, QS places KTH 10th among universities in the European Union and highest among universities in Sweden. KTH’s highest scores were awarded for sustainability, proportion of international faculty, international research network, and citation rate.
KTH is also ranked 58th best university in the world in tackling environmental, social and governance issues, according to the second edition of the QS Sustainability Rankings, which features 1,403 institutions worldwide. KTH improved its position significantly, jumping from 98th place in the first edition to 58th in the latest.
THE World University Rankings and THE Impact Rankings
They are annually published by the Times Higher Education (THE) magazine. Till 2009, the publisher collaborated with QS to publish joint rankings. Successively, they introduced a new ranking system with, initially, Thomson Reuters and Elsevier from 2014.
KTH was lifted to 95th place among more than 2,000 universities worldwide in the 2025 Times Higher Education World University Ranking. The placement is two spots higher than where the university landed in the 2024 ranking, and the second best in Sweden. KTH’s score for Research Environment is one factor contributing to its overall higher ranking. Its score of 58.3 compares favorably with the highest-ranked universities. KTH also scored 97.3 in Industry, achieving a perfect score of 100 in the ‘Patents’ sub-indicator. Moreover, with a score of 81.4 in Research Quality, KTH stands above 75 percent of the participants. KTH has improved in almost all related sub-indicators.
On June 2024, KTH was ranked 72 out of 1,963 universities in the Times Higher Education's (THE) Impact Ranking 2024 that measures how universities have performed based on the UN's global goals. KTH has dropped in the ranking. Last year's ranking was 46th out of a total of 1,591 universities. One possible explanation is that competition has increased, with almost 400 universities participating since last year. KTH has been chosen to be ranked among eight of the 17 global goals. The three goal areas where KTH is ranked highest are goal 13 - “Climate action”, goal 11 - “Sustainable cities and communities”, and goal 12 - “Sustainable consumption and production”. The 17th goal, “Partnerships for the goals”, is mandatory to report.
Other rankings
Several rankings are published every year. Among them, the Shanghai Ranking - namely, the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) - is annually published. Its methodology is pretty objective and transparent, but it has drawn wide criticism due to the use of indicators such as the number of staff that won Nobel prizes or Fields Medal that, clearly, advantage larger institutions over smaller ones.
A different and new ranking is the CWTS Leiden Ranking Open Edition that is totally based on open data from OpenAlex. The Open Edition implements the principles for the responsible use of university rankings defined by CoARA , giving a multidimensional perspective on scientific performance of over 1500 major universities worldwide. Bibliometric indicators are grouped into three categories (scientific impact, collaboration and open access) and can be selected to compare different institutions. For example, KTH in the period 2019-2022 are published 9841 OA publications, the 77% of the total of publications compared with an 83% for all Sweden.
KTH is also ranked in other ranking lists with constantly very good results due to the strong commitment of research, education and sustainability. Receiving good ranking is always nice but, at the same time, KTH cannot be driven by rankings but by its own mission and values.
Read more about KTH's vision and overall , and why you should choose KTH as your place of study or as your job place .