Lifestyle

One university in South Africa has entered the top 500 globally in new ranking

Staff Writer

 ·28 Jan 2026

Webometrics published its 2026 global higher education ranking, listing 124 institutions from South Africa, including all 26 public universities.

The Webometrics.info ranking has been published since 2004 by Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, the largest public research body in Spain.

It aims to promote open access to the knowledge generated by universities, and as such, focuses on the quantity and quality of higher education web content.

This, the group noted, significantly enhances the transfer of scientific and cultural knowledge to society.

“The rankings are one of the most powerful tools for initiating and consolidating change in academia, increasing scholars’ engagement, and establishing long-term strategies,” it said.

While other global rankings focus on established, globally recognised universities, the Webometrics ranking covers over 32,000 higher education institutions, including those in the Global South that are often overlooked.

It is important to note that the 23-year-old Webometrics.info ranking is not the same as the Webometrics.org ranking, which is based on the original and uses a different methodology.

The ranking model is based on both webometric and bibliometric (research) indicators, which are collected from reliable sources such as Majestic, OpenAlex, and Scimago-Scopus.

The rankings are mainly based on three core indicators.

• Visibility: The number of external networks (subnets) linking to the institution’s web pages (weighted 50%)
• Excellence: The number of papers amongst the top 10% most cited in each one of all 27 disciplines of the full database over the last five years (40%)
• Openness: The number of citations from the authors, excluding outliers (10%)

Web data was gathered during the first days of January 2026, while bibliometric information covers the period from 2020 to 2024 for Excellence and 2021-2025 for Openness.

The 2026 ranking listed over 32,000 HEIs. In the table below, we have focused only on the 26 public universities in South Africa.

We have also compared the year-on-year results, looking at the global positioning in January 2025 vs January 2026.

Notably, South Africa has moved towards expanding the classification of “university” to include private HEIs, and future rankings may include a broader listing beyond public institutions.

Top universities in South Africa

The ranking of the top 26 universities in South Africa has seen a shakeup in 2026, with one of the country’s top performers dropping far down the rankings.

The University of Cape Town maintained its position at the top of the list, followed by Wits University and the University of Pretoria.

Stellenbosch University, which ranked fourth overall in South Africa last year, tumbled down the local and global rankings, now sitting at 24th.

Webometrics.info noted that this was due to a change in the university’s domain name, which is “catastrophic” for this type of ranking.

Most universities (21 of 26) dropped in the global rankings, indicating an overall deterioration in local webometric data.

Five universities improved their positioning, led by the University of Johannesburg, which entered the top 500 in the world.

Seven universities in South Africa were ranked among the top 1000.

Given their status, South Africa’s 26 public universities typically make up the top 26 positions in the country. However, in 2026, two other HEIs actually placed higher.

IIE MSA, known as Monash University South Africa, ranked 25th in the country, and the South African College of Applied Psychology ranked 26th.

This places them above the Mongosuthu University of Technology and Sol Plaatje University, ranked at 27th and 28th, respectively.

Update: The article has been updated to clarify the distinction between the original Webometrics.info ranking used in this article and the Webometrics.org ranking, which is an adaptation. Comment on Stellenbosch’s drop in the rankings has also been added.