Four Scandinavian universities were listed among the top 100 in the world, while nine made the top 200, according to an international university ranking for 2025 by Times Higher Education (THE).
THE publishes a list of the highest rated universities each year - this year’s rankings included 2,092 universities around the world.
According to THE's analysis, the reputations of the education sectors in the UK and US are declining, which suggests that more international students may be looking to countries in Europe and elsewhere for their studies in 2025.
Here are Scandinavia’s top-rated universities at present, according to the global ranking.
Karolinska Institute
Karolinska, based in Stockholm, came in at 49 on THE’s list, and is one of the world’s leading medical universities.
Notably, it has the most international students of all the Swedish universities on the list, with 28 percent of the student body coming from outside of Sweden.
It also has the highest ratio of female to male students among the top Swedish universities, with a 70:30 ratio.
Karolinska scored highly in the research quality and industry categories, and had the highest international outlook score of all Swedish universities on THE’s list.
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
The next Swedish university on the list is KTH Royal Institute of Technology, which came in joint 95th place alongside another Swedish university, Lund.
Like Karolinska, KTH Royal Institute of Technology has a high proportion of international students, with just over a quarter, 26 percent, of the student body coming from abroad.
KTH also scored highly in the international outlook and industry categories.
Lund University
Lund had similar scores to KTH Royal Institute of Technology, with an almost perfect score in the industry category.
Of the Swedish universities in the top 200, Lund has the most equal balance of female to male students, with a 55:45 ratio. Over a fifth, or 21 percent, of students at Lund are internationals. Interestingly, the top three Swedish universities all have student bodies where at least 20 percent of students are from abroad.
University of Copenhagen
The next Scandinavian university on the list and the only Danish one in the top 100 was the University of Copenhagen, which placed 97th. It did particularly well in the industry and research quality categories, with scores of over 90 in both categories, while its lowest score, 49.1 was in teaching.
Copenhagen has the largest number of students among the top five Scandinavian universities, with 30,962. Karolinska, which came first, has just 8,005.
Only 14 percent of Copenhagen University students are internationals – that’s the joint-lowest figure among the Scandinavian universities in the top 200 and it also has the lowest number of students to staff (4.2) in this group.
Aarhus University
The first Scandinavian university outside the top 100 was Aarhus, in 110th place, which had a near-perfect score in the industry category, just 0.1 point behind Lund. It also scored highly on international outlook, with its 79.4 score putting it ahead of Copenhagen and Lund in this category.
Aarhus has a slightly higher percentage of international students than Copenhagen, with 15 percent of students coming from abroad. It also has a more gender-equal student body, with a 56:44 female to male ratio compared to Copenahgen’s 63:37.
University of Oslo
Norway’s first entry on the THE ranking was University of Oslo, which placed 116 overall and 6th in Scandinavia. Of its 19,971 students, 17 percent are international students. Oslo had a score above 90 on research quality, with a fairly high international outlook score of 77.7. Oslo was also the only Norwegian university among the top 250 worldwide, and the only one to make the top ten in Scandinavia.
Technical University of Denmark (DTU)
DTU placed 124th on the ranking, making it the 7th best university in Scandinavia and the third best in Denmark. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a technical university, it had a near-perfect industry score of 99.8, the joint-highest score in this category among the Scandinavian universities, alongside Lund.
It also has the highest proportion of international students among the Scandinavian universities in the top 200, with 30 percent of DTU’s 10,492 students coming from outside Denmark.
DTU has roughly two male students to every female student, with a 34:66 female to male ratio.
Uppsala University
Sweden’s fourth-best university was Uppsala, placing 130th worldwide. Uppsala has an 18 percent international student population, placing it above Copenhagen, Aarhus and Oslo in this category. It also has a relatively high proportion of women to men, with a 59:41 ratio. It scored highly (96.1) in the industry category, but a low score of 44.2 on teaching pulled down its overall ranking.
Stockholm University
The final Scandinavian university in the top 200 was Stockholm, which came 191st worldwide, making it ninth in Scandinavia. Stockholm’s highest score was in the research quality category (89.3), although it had the lowest teaching score among the top Scandinavian universities at just 32.8. It has the second-largest student body after Copenhagen, with just 14 percent of those coming from abroad.
How did Scandinavian universities perform this year compared to last year?
Most of the nine Scandinavian universities which made the top 200 worldwide ranking improved their scores when compared with their rankings last year. Karolinska rose one place, KTH Royal Institute of Technology rose two, Lund rose nine, and Copenhagen rose six places.
Aarhus dropped just one place, while Oslo rose an impressive eleven places. Technical University of Denmark (DTU) rose two places and Uppsala jumped ten. The last university, Stockholm, dropped six places while Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, which placed 189 in 2024, dropped at least eleven places out of the top 200 entirely.
After the top 200, THE places universities in categories rather than giving them specific spots on the ranking. Chalmers was in the 201-250 category, alongside Linköping and Gothenburg universities, both in Sweden.
Which are the top three best universities in each country?
The top three universities in Sweden were Karolinska (49th place worldwide), KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Lund (both 95).
Denmark’s top three were Copenhagen (97), Aarhus (110) and DTU (124), while Norway’s top three were Oslo (116), Bergen (251-300) and Norwegian University of Science and Technology (301-350).
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