The UOC, ranked as the best online university in Spain

This is the eighth time the UOC has appeared in this prestigious list of the world's best universities, which is produced each year by Times Higher Education (THE). The 2026 edition of the THE ranking names the UOC as the best online university in Spain. It places the UOC in the eighth group of the best universities in Spain; and, internationally, in the 801-1,000 bracket among the over 2,000 institutions from all over the world that were reviewed. The THE World University Rankings is considered one of the most prestigious and transparent classifications in the field of higher education, rivalled only by the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities and the QS World University Rankings.

The prestigious world ranking places the UOC as the top online university in Spain, followed by the UNED (Spanish National University of Distance Education), in the 1,201-1,500 bracket, and the International University of La Rioja (UNIR), in the 1,501+ bracket. When Spain's brick and mortar universities are added into the mix, the UOC is outperformed by only 13 out of the 61 reviewed: the University of Barcelona (UB) (in 145th place); the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (183rd); Pompeu Fabra University (187th); the University of Navarra (251-300 bracket); the Autonomous University of Madrid (351-400); the Complutense University of Madrid and Universitat de València (501-600); and Universitat Politècnica de València, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, the University of Granada, the University of Santiago de Compostela and the University of the Basque Country (601-800).

The THE ranking focuses on five areas at each institution

The THE ranking looks at five areas in order to gauge the universities' level of higher education excellence: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry and international outlook.

The UOC obtained the following results: 18.5 for teaching, 20.5 for research environment, 68.3 for research quality, 32.8 for industry and 50 for international outlook.

Over the last few years, the UOC has risen by more than 10 points in the international outlook category, as shown in the chart below:

Since 2019, the UOC's score for the research environment category has gone up by eight points, as you can see here:

The University of Oxford tops the rankings once again this year, followed by MIT.