Every autumn Times Higher Education releases its ranking of the best universities across the world. This year, 22 German universities made the top 200.

THE university rankings 2023

The 2023 THE rankings, carried out every year by the UK magazine Times Higher Education, includes 1.799 universities across 104 countries and regions, making it the largest and most diverse university ranking to date. The rankings judged research-intensive universities across 13 performance indicators to create the list.

The performance indicators were:

• Teaching (the learning environment)
• Research (volume, income and reputation)
• Citations (research influence)
• International outlook (staff, students and research)
• Industry income (knowledge transfer)

As usual, the 2023 ranking’s top 10 spots are filled exclusively by institutions from the US and UK. For the sixth year in a row, the University of Oxford has claimed the crown as the best university in the world. Its fellow Brit, the University of Cambridge, takes joint third place with Stanford University, moving up from fifth last year. The other eight top spots in the ranking are dominated by US universities, including the California Institute of Technology, Harvard and Princeton University with Imperial College London taking 10th place.

After the UK and the US dominated the top spots, Switzerland was the third country to appear on the ranking, with the Swiss university ETH Zurich coming joint 11th place with Columbia University.

Best ranked German universities 2023

As has been the case in recent years, Munich was the German city that performed best when it came to rankings. Both LMU and Technical University of Munich were included in the top 10 German universities, swapping places from last year. 2023 sees the Technical University of Munich take 30th in the world and first in Germany, while LMU takes 33rd place internationally and second in Germany. The city in Bavaria is consistently ranked as one of the best student cities in the world.

Of the German universities in the top 200, the Technical University of Munich also had the highest percentage of international students, at 36 percent. Unlike universities in the US and in some parts of the UK, most universities in Germany do not charge tuition fees. The German system also offers a number of scholarships to help international students cover their living costs while studying.

Further north, Berlin's Free University fell to 91st place after last year's ranking, when it made an impressive leap up 35 places. The university in former West Berlin drew with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. 

Of the German federal states, Baden-Württemberg had the most universities, five in total, in the international top 200. Thereafter Bavaria, Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia followed, each with four universities in the top 200.

These 22 German universities all made it into the top 200 in the world in 2023:

• 30. Technical University of Munich
• 33. LMU Munich
• 43. Heidelberg University
• 73. Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin
• =86. Humboldt University of Berlin
• =86. University of Tübingen
• 89. University of Bonn
• =91. Free University of Berlin
• =99. RWTH Aachen University
• 113. University of Freiburg
• =119. University of Göttingen
• =128. University of Hamburg
• =139. University of Würzburg
• 146. University of Cologne
• =148. Ulm University
• =156. Technical University of Berlin
• =156. TU Dresden
• 179. University of Mannheim
• 185. University of Münster
• =189. Friedrich Schiller University Jena
• =189. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
• =196. University of Erlangen-Nuremberg

For more information on the ranking, visit the Times Higher Education website.