Pompeu Fabra University consolidates its prestige and international projection placing three disciplines among the top 100 in the world in the 2026 edition of the QS World University Rankings by Subject, thus improving on last year’s results. Economics and econometrics ranks 31st in the world, with a clear improvement of two positions compared to last year). Linguistics, in 54th place, makes a great leap forward for the second consecutive year: in the previous edition it ranked 65th, and two years ago it appeared in the 101-150 bracket.  The third UPF discipline among the top 100 is communication and media studies, which has improved substantially as it has entered the 51-100 bracket, while last year it featured in the 101-150 bracket.

UPF places a further seven disciplines among the top 200. They are law (in the 101-150 bracket) and accounting and finance, archaeology, modern languages, philosophy, politics and international studies, and sociology, all within the 151-200 bracket. The other UPF disciplines included in the ranking (in total, the University is ranked for 17 subjects) are art and design, biological sciences, business and management studies, computer science and information systems, mathematics, and medicine, all distributed in different brackets, between positions 200 and 400.

Economics and econometrics at UPF ranks ninth in Europe and first in Spain

If we focus on European universities, economics and econometrics comes in ninth place, and linguistics in the seventeenth.

At the state-wide level, economics and econometrics continues in first place, and linguistics is in second. It should be noted that communication and media studies holds second place in Spain (rising one position compared to the previous edition).

Law and politics, and international studies are on the podium, coming in third and second place, respectively. The remaining disciplines are in the top thirteen positions.

Concerning the global results, three of the five knowledge blocks of the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 are headed by Harvard University (Health Sciences and Medicine, Social Sciences and Management, and Natural Sciences), while the Engineering and Technology block is led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Arts and Humanities by Oxford.

A ranking that includes more than 50 disciplines and uses five indicators

The 2026 edition of the world ranking by subjects by the British company Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) includes 55 academic disciplines. This year, it has ranked nearly 1,900 institutions from more than a hundred countries.

With regard to the methodology, the ranking uses five indicators: an academic reputation survey, a survey of employer reputation, citations received by publications by each individual lecturer, the h-index, which measures the output and the impact of publications, and the International Research Network (IRN), which measures stable research partnerships in the five major thematic areas of the ranking.