In the World University Rankings by Subject 2026, the ranking by areas of knowledge published by the British Times Higher Education today, 21 January, UPF is among the 100 best in the world for a new discipline compared to last year: Law, which has climbed to 74th position, while in the previous edition it was in the 101-125 bracket. UPF also ranks in the top 100 for Business and Economics, which remains fairly stable at 83rd (last year it was 82nd).

Law has climbed to 74th position, while in the previous edition it was in the 101-125 bracket

As for the other disciplines in which UPF features in the ranking, Arts and Humanities (including studies related to Humanities and Translation and Language Sciences) and Social Sciences (includes studies related to Communication and Political and Social Sciences) remain in the 101-125 bracket. Finally, Medical and Health (176-200) and Engineering (301-400) also hold the same positions as in the 2025 classification.

These results mean that on a state-wide level, UPF leads the table for Business and Economics, and stands on the podium for and Social Sciences (second) and Engineering, Law, and Medicine and Health (third).

On a global scale, six Anglo-Saxon institutions top the eleven areas included in the ranking: Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities and Business and Economics (Massachusetts Institute of Technology); Law, and Education Studies (Stanford University); Engineering and Life Sciences (Harvard University), Medical and Health and Computer Science (University of Oxford), Physical Sciences (California Institute of Technology), and Psychology (University of Cambridge).

The World University Rankings 2026 by Subject, which include 148 disciplines, uses the eighteen performance indicators that are already used in the Times Higher Education global ranking, split into five categories: teaching, research environment, research quality, international outlook, and industry. However, the weighting of the indicators changes depending on the different disciplines, in order to make a more accurate calculation in each area of knowledge.