UK boasts 12 out of 20 of Europe’s best universities

The UK is the most represented country in the list, with 107 universities featured

Radcliffe Camera, the University of Oxford. Getty Images

Europe's top universities have been ranked for the first time by global higher education analyst QS.

The institutions were assessed on global recognition, research prowess, teaching resources, internationalisation and employment outcomes

The University of Oxford took top spot while ETH Zurich in Switzerland placed second and the University of Cambridge third.

The UK is the most represented country in the ranking, with 107 universities featured, followed by Turkey with 73 and Germany with 53.

“The inaugural edition of the QS Europe Ranking offers a unique opportunity for universities in one of the world’s most competitive higher education landscapes to benchmark themselves against their international peers, and for its policymakers to assess individual institutional performance across the broadest range of data sets in any of our rankings," QS senior vice president Ben Sowter said.

"The UK, somewhat predictably, shines across indicators, underpinned in part by the global renown of the historic Oxbridge universities and its high-impact, globally collaborative research.

"However, signposts for success are illuminated in all locations by the respective challenges identified by the data sets, whether incentivising international faculty and students, developing cross-border research partnerships or expanding teaching capacity.”

UK university rankings - in pictures

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  1 University of St Andrews. Getty Images

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  2 University of Oxford. Getty Images

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  3 University of Cambridge. Getty Images

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  4 London School of Economics and Political Science. Getty Images

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  5 Imperial College London. Getty Images

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  6 University College London. Getty Images

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  7 Durham University. Alamy

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  8 University of Bath. Wikimedia Commons

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  9 University of Warwick. Alamy

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  10 Loughborough University. Wikimedia Commons

Europe's top 20 universities for 2024

1 - University of Oxford, UK

2 - ETH Zurich - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland

3 - University of Cambridge, UK

4 - Imperial College London, UK

5 - UCL, UK

6 - University of Edinburgh, UK

7 - Université PSL, France

8 - University of Manchester, UK

9 - EPFL, Switzerland

10 - King's College London, UK

11 - Technical University of Munich, Germany

12 - London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

13 - Delft University of Technology, Netherlands

14 - University of Glasgow, UK

15 - University of Leeds, UK

16 - University of Bristol, UK

=17 - Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany

=17 - University of Amsterdam, Netherlands

19 - University of Warwick, UK

20 - Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany