QS Rankings Cycle 2028

Data Collection

If you are a new institution submitting institutional data for the first time, we advise you to submit your data by 31 December 2026 to ensure that your institution can be evaluated for the 2028 cycle.

Survey Contacts Submission

QS invites institutions to supply both academic and employer contacts who will be sent the relevant survey as part of our research process. For more information please see our Submission Procedure.

Academic Survey

The Academic Survey informs the Academic Reputation indicators that are used in the QS Rankings. The survey is sent to contacts provided through the Survey Contacts submission process and other sources including previous respondents and contacts from our Sign-up Facility.

Employer Survey

The Employer Survey informs the employer reputation indicators that are used in the QS Rankings. The survey is sent to contacts provided through the Survey Contacts submission process and other sources including previous respondents and contacts from our Sign-up Facility.

Institution Data

QS invites institutions to submit data to support our research, this includes: staff and student numbers; fee information; and subject data. Data is submitted via QS HUB.

Submitting data is the best way to ensure that the data we hold on your institution and use for the rankings is accurate.

Unfortunately we are not able to provide extensions, so please let us know if you need any help or clarification to complete the process in time.

Sustainability Data

For the QS Sustainability Rankings we collect additional data from institutions relating to Environmental Impact, Social Impact and Governance. Data is submitted via QS HUB.

Publication

For the exact dates of all our ranking launches please refer to our ranking calendar.

*Please note that the Subject Rankings are the last project in the cycle so the 2027 edition will be published in 2027.

All institutions can submit data for the rankings. This data is important in ensuring our rankings are as accurate as possible.

You should submit data for your institution through our QS HUB platform. Please contact our Institution Support Team via our helpdesk if you do not have login details, or need further support.

Our rankings are not opt-in/opt-out, so it is in an institution's best interest to ensure that we reflect them accurately by submitting their data.

Where we don’t have data submitted by an institution, we feature them on the strength of proprietary and publicly available or previously supplied data. Our rankings are designed with this in mind.

For the majority of the data we request, the reporting period should cover the academic year previous to our rankings cycle. E.g. if the cycle begins in November 2026, we are collecting data for the 2025 academic year.

This will be approximately January to December for the Southern Hemisphere, and August to July for the Northern Hemisphere.

There are exceptions to this, so please refer to our data dictionary if you are unsure.

Details on our methodologies and indicators can be found at support.qs.com.

We endeavour to provide six months’ notice to institutions when a change is made to our methodology, as well as updating any changes on our support site.

If your university meets our Eligibility Criteria, then your institution may be evaluated for inclusion in the following rankings:

• QS World University Rankings
• QS Regional Rankings
• QS World University Rankings: Sustainability
• QS World University Rankings by Subject

The inclusion in any published ranking is dependent on university performance and that they are operational at the time of the ranking’s publication.

The submission of data does not guarantee that an institution will be ranked in any QS published rankings. Please refer to the individual rankings pages to find out more details.

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