A total of 13 Turkish universities have secured places among the world's top 1,000 higher education institutions in the latest 2025-2026 University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP), with Hacettepe University emerging as the country's highest-ranked institution.
Released by the University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP) Research Laboratory at the Informatics Institute of the Middle East Technical University (METU), the ranking evaluates the world's top 3,000 universities based on academic performance.
URAP, one of the 11 internationally recognized organizations that rank higher education institutions, assesses universities using six indicators: the number of academic articles, citation count, total scientific documents, publication impact, citation impact and international collaboration.
Hacettepe University ranked 585th globally, making it the highest-performing Turkish institution on the list.
It was followed by Istanbul Technical University in 710th place, Ankara University at 748th, Gazi University at 824th, and Koç University at 832nd.
Also making the top 1,000 were Istanbul University in 890th place, Ege University in 891st, Atatürk University in 894th, Middle East Technical University (METU) in 936th, the University of Health Sciences in 958th, Near East University in 971st, Istanbul University-Cerrahpaşa in 977th and Yıldız Technical University in 981st.
Overall, 128 universities from Türkiye were included among the world's top 3,000 institutions in this year's URAP rankings.
Globally, Harvard University retained the top spot, followed by Zhejiang University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Tsinghua University in China, while University College London (UCL) rounded out the Top 5.
The University of Toronto ranked sixth, followed by the University of Oxford, Peking University, Stanford University and Sun Yat-sen University.
China led the rankings with five universities in the global top 10, while the U.S. and the U.K. each had two institutions represented. Canada had one university in the top 10.
