QS World Rankings 2026: IIT-Hyderabad, UoH, Osmania among top 50 Indian institutes; IIIT-Hyderabad, NIT-Warangal miss the list

Three premier institutes from Telangana — Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH), University of Hyderabad, and Osmania University — have featured in the top 50 Indian institutions in the QS World University Rankings 2026, released on Thursday.

A total of 54 institutes from the country made it to the list this year.Among them, IITH ranked 17th in India, while UoH stood at 28 and OU at 46. Globally, IITH improved its position to 664 from last year’s 681–690 band. UoH and OU retained their previous positions in the 801–850 and 1201–1400 brackets, respectively. “Many rankings, including the QS World, give weightage to perception and Internationalisation -- area where our universities often fall short,” said professor Chandra Shekhar Sharma of IIT.Officials from city-based institutions acknowledged the growing competitiveness. “We are putting in effort to improve our rankings. This healthy competition is raising education standards. At UoH, we’re focusing on research, publications, admissions, and improving perception. We hope to see results in the coming years,” said a senior UoH administrator.Notably, several institutes, including IIIT-Hyderabad, NIT-Warangal and JNTU-Hyderabad failed to make it to the rankings.

Explaining the gap, Telangana State Council of Higher Education chairman V Balakista Reddy said, “Only one of our state universities made the cut because we lack a strong research culture. We are taking measures to build it. Faculty now have access to international journals, and we’re working to secure more national and international research projects.

Improvements are underway to help more universities qualify in the future.”The 2026 QS rankings assessed 1,501 universities across 106 countries. Over 19.8 million research papers published between 2019 and 2023, with 200 million citations, were evaluated along with insights from 15 lakh academics and five lakh employers.Institutions were ranked on parameters such as academic reputation, faculty citations, employment outcomes, faculty-student ratio, internationalisation, and sustainability.