Malaga University excels with nursing and education in the Shanghai ranking

Although this is the same position as in 2025, it is one bracket lower than the rating it had in 2024, 2022, 2021 and 2020, when it was in the 701-800 bracket.

First among the Spanish universities is the University of Barcelona, which appears in the 151-200 bracket.

Harvard University is the best in the world, followed by Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Three US higher education institutions therefore occupy the top three places in the global rankings. The UK comes into fourth place with the University of Cambridge.

American universities reappear in fifth and sixth place with Berkeley and Princeton. Europe comes again in seventh place with Oxford. Next come Columbia, Chicago, the California Institute of Technology, Yale and Cornell.

Only then, in 13th place, does another country enter the fray: France, with Paris-Saclay. After that, without interruption right up to 18th place, American dominance continues, with the occasional British entry, until China appears with Tsinghua University and Switzerland with ETH Zurich.

The University of Malaga's position highlights the institution's stability in the rankings against a backdrop of decline amongst Spanish universities, particularly in Andalucía.

Deputy Chancellor of the UMA Teodomiro López Navarrete says: "The fact that Malaga University remains among the world's top 1,000 universities and is one of only three Andalusian universities still featured in the Shanghai ranking is a testament to the hard work and calibre of our research community."

"The figures should also give us pause for thought: international competition is growing ever fiercer and we need sufficient and stable funding to enable Andalusian public universities to continue to progress, attract talent and compete on a level playing field," he warns.

The UMA emphasises that the strong growth of Asian universities, particularly those in China, and their increasing investment in research, infrastructure and talent recruitment are raising the level of competition year on year. This means that maintaining current levels of scientific output no longer guarantees that a university will retain its position, as other university systems are advancing at a faster pace.

The most important criteria determining a university's position in the Shanghai ranking are the number of times its researchers publish in leading scientific journals, in particular Nature and Science, the frequency with which they are cited and the number of Nobel Prizes awarded to its staff, as well as scientific achievements relative to the size of the institution.

Spain has gone from having 36 universities among the top 1,000 in 2025 to 30 in 2026. Out of the six universities in Andalucía last year, only three remain in this year's ranking.

While in the Shanghai ranking the UMA ranks in the 801-900 bracket, in Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (Gras) 2025, which analyses disciplines individually, the university managed to place seven disciplines among the world's top 500.

The two disciplines in which the UMA achieved its highest rankings were Nursing and Education: in both, it ranked between 201 and 300. In Nursing, the UMA has held this position since 2022. Meanwhile, in Education, it moved up from the 401-500 bracket, where it had been since 2020, to the aforementioned 201-300 bracket.

Following these two subject areas, the next one in which the UMA stands out is Telecommunications (301-400). The last time this discipline taught at the UMA featured prominently in the Shanghai ranking was in 2020, when it was ranked in the 201-300 bracket.

In the Public Health rankings, the UMA also appears in the 301-400 range. This represented an improvement in 2025 compared with its 401-500 ranking in 2024.

One rank lower, in positions 401-500, the UMA places Electronic Engineering, Agricultural Sciences and Business Administration. However, the performance of these three disciplines has been mixed. The first ranked 201-300 between 2020 and 2023, in 2024 it dropped to 301-400 and last year it dropped another bracket.

Meanwhile, in Agricultural Sciences, the UMA ranked among the top 151-200 universities in 2020, but from then on it slipped down the rankings and in 2023 it even dropped out of the Shanghai ranking altogether.

Business Administration, apart from the years in which it failed to make it into the Shanghai ranking, has consistently held the same position.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the latest subject-specific rankings is the disappearance of Hotel and Tourism Management from the 2025 list. In its best year, 2020, it ranked 47th. From there, it slipped down to 101-150 in 2024. In 2025, it dropped out of the rankings altogether.

Meanwhile, Pharmacy, which made an appearance in the 401-500 bracket in 2024, dropped out of the rankings in 2025. Chemical Engineering, which featured in the rankings between 2020 and 2023, dropped out in 2024.

Other UMA disciplines that have also featured in the rankings in recent years but no longer appeared in 2025 were Veterinary Medicine, Chemistry, Computer Engineering and Environmental Sciences.

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