TIME Magazine named the University of Wisconsin-Madison the 19th best university in the world and the 2nd best public university in the United States in their ‘World’s Top Universities of 2026’ rankings.
UW-Madison rose seven positions from 2025, leapfrogging the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, Los Angeles. The University of Michigan took the top U.S. public university spot.
The United States and United Kingdom continue to dominate academic leaderboards, with Chinese universities rising in the ranks for innovation and economic impact.
TIME’s rankings scored universities in three key aspects: academic capacity and performance, innovation and economic impact and global engagement.
TIME examined the resources allotted to teaching and research output, as well as how universities advance science and technology, the circulation of knowledge and the economical success of their alumni. The proportion of international students and extent of the university’s international success determined each institution’s global engagement score.
UW-Madison notched a total score of 76.98, leading on academic capacity and performance but trailing on global engagement.
UW-Madison is among the largest research universities in the country by research expenditure, allocating over $1 billion annually to various projects. Last month, the university returned to the top five in national research expenditures for the first time in 12 years. UW-Madison invested over $1.9 billion in research in 2025, with almost half coming from awards from federal organizations like the National Institute of Health and the Department of Energy.
Federal funding supports research at UW-Madison in fields like physics, agriculture and medicine.
However, UW-Madison has struggled with a decreasing enrollment of international students amid Trump administration cuts to funding and visa terminations.
