Published by ShanghaiRanking, the ranking evaluates 500 universities worldwide based on mathematics research performance across five broad areas: world-class faculty, research output, research quality, research impact and international collaboration.

Kyoto University ranked 16th globally with a total score of 249.7, supported by strong performances in faculty and research output.

Kyoto University Clock Tower Centennial Hall and the Camphor Tree in Kyoto, Japan, July 2021. Photo by the university fanpage

The top five positions went to Princeton University in the United States, Paris-Saclay University in France, the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S., and the University of Cambridge in the U.K.

Kyoto University was followed by Imperial College London in 17th place, Université Paris Cité in 18th, the University of Toronto in 19th and Columbia University in 20th.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel ranked 24th, making it the next-highest institution in the ranking from Asia, followed by China's Tsinghua University in 26th place, right after Yale .

Seven other Chinese universities ranked between 32nd (Peking University) and 52nd positions, while the National University of Singapore followed at 56th.

China and Singapore have emerged as rising stars in Asian higher education, with their universities climbing global rankings in recent years.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2025, conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), ranked students in China the world's top performers in mathematics and science, as Singapore came second in both subjects.

The ShanghaiRanking focuses on mathematics research rather than overall university performance. ShanghaiRanking uses data from 2020 to 2024 and requires universities to have published at least 100 mathematics papers during that period to qualify.

Bibliometric data are drawn from Web of Science and InCites. Indicators include papers published in first-quartile (Q1) journals, category-normalized citation impact and internationally co-authored papers.

Category-normalized citation impact compares the citations received by a university's papers with the average for publications in the same subject, year and publication type.

As a result, the ranking emphasizes research strength and influence rather than undergraduate teaching quality, student experience, or graduate employment. Its results should therefore be interpreted as a measure of mathematics research performance, not a comprehensive assessment of mathematics degree programs.

ShanghaiRanking's Global Ranking of Academic Subjects assesses universities worldwide across 57 subjects in the natural sciences, engineering, life sciences, medical sciences and social sciences.

Top 20 universities for mathematics according to ShanghaiRanking: