This year, Eötvös Loránd University has been ranked among the world’s leading higher education institutions in 13 academic fields. It is the only Hungarian university to appear in seven of these categories and places within the global top 300 in five areas: archaeology, linguistics, history, psychology, and mathematics.

Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) published the 2026 subject rankings on March 25, examining over 21,000 programs at 6,200 universities in 166 countries based on academic and employer recognition, citation of scientific publications, the Hirsch index, and international research collaborations. You can read about the methodology of the subject ranking here in English.

Fields of Science

Out of the examined higher education institutions, 1,908 were able to make it to the top list. The survey presents the world's top programs in five broad fields of science, further broken down into 55 narrower subject areas. This year, ELTE is ranked in three major fields of science: 305th in humanities, 385th in natural sciences, and in the 501-550 category in social sciences and management. 

In the national lineup, in humanities, ELTE is followed by the University of Szeged (401-500) and the University of Debrecen (501-550), in natural sciences, by the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (401-450) and University of Szeged (501-550) in the ranking, and in the social sciences and management area, Corvinus (382) was the first domestic institution, with Eötvös Loránd University taking second place in Hungary.

Narrower Subject Areas

ELTE also achieved a better place in archaeology and mathematics compared to the previous year. Our university holds a leading position in nine out of the 13 listed subject areas in the national field (in physics, tied with BME), and is the only Hungarian university in the ranking in seven of them. The detailed results of Eötvös Loránd University are shown in the table below.

International Overview

The 2026 QS is the largest subject survey to date, with more than 300 institutions appearing on the list for the first time (most of them from East Asia), and universities in South Asia showing the greatest improvement. Regarding the five major fields of science, Oxford, Harvard, and Cambridge lead in humanities, MIT, Stanford, and ETH Zurich in engineering and technology, Harvard, Oxford, and Johns Hopkins University in life sciences, Harvard, MIT, and Oxford in natural sciences, and Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford in social sciences stepped onto the podium in this order.

The results of the QS 2026 subject ranking can be browsed here by fields of science, subject areas, and geographic location, and ELTE's excellent achievements in domestic and international rankings are collected on this link.