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The ranking of global full-time MBA programs by QS Quacquarelli Symonds is dominated by big-name US business schools, occupying the top four spots.
Harvard Business School comes in second; MIT Sloan School of Management rises one place to third; and the winner of the previous five years, Stanford Graduate School of Business, drops to fourth after declines in its Employability, Value for Money, and Diversity indicators.
Wharton’s top-ranking is underpinned by strong scores across the board, listed first globally for Employability for the second year running, alongside top 10 positions for Alumni Outcomes and Thought Leadership.
France-based HEC Paris overtakes London Business School as Europe’s best MBA, rounding out the world’s top five in the QS ranking.
Top 20 MBA programs
Schools in the US and Europe take every spot in the QS top 20. The US leads with 11 schools in the MBA ranking—compared with nine from Europe—and takes six of the top 10 spots.
HEC Paris is joined by the UK’s London Business School (sixth) and Cambridge Judge Business School (seventh), along with France’s INSEAD (eighth). Northwestern Kellogg School of Management (ninth) and New York-based Columbia Business School complete the top 10.
Spain’s IE Business School drops out of the top 10 this year, falling from ninth to 11th place.
Oxford Saïd Business School is the third UK school to rank among the top 20 and rises from 19th to joint 12th this year, making it one of the largest gainers among the top 20. It's joined by Imperial Business School which drops to 19th down from 18th this year.
Most business schools ranked among the global top 20 by QS remain in similar positions compared with the 2025 ranking, with a few notable changes: Yale School of Management climbs four places to joint 12th, while IESE Business School falls from 10th to joint 15th, and UCLA Anderson School of Management slips from 14th to 18th.
Best MBA Programs 2026 (QS)
Source: QS MBA Ranking 2026
Winners and losers outside the top 20
Elsewhere in the ranking, the top MBA outside Europe and the US remains the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School, now 23rd after rising two places. The only other Asia-Pacific program in the global top 30 is Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, which moves up one spot to 28th, supported by strong scores for Thought Leadership and Return on Investment.
Australia follows with its highest-ranked program, Melbourne Business School, in 31st place, just ahead of the University of New South Wales’s AGSM in Sydney, which gains one position from last year. In Canada, Toronto’s Rotman School of Management records one of the steepest declines in the ranking, falling from 39th to 55th.
Among European schools, Grenoble Ecole de Management makes the most notable advance, climbing 26 places to reach 66th—the largest improvement of any MBA that was also ranked last year.
EGADE Business School in Mexico retains its position as Latin America’s highest-ranked MBA, holding steady in 56th place.
QS vs Financial Times, US News Rankings
You should never take one ranking as fact. Instead, compare all MBA rankings, including those published by the Financial Times (FT) and US News, and track a business school’s performance over time.
All three of these rankings differ significantly. For example, the Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business MBA doesn’t appear in the QS top 20, but it ranks 20th in the FT list and joint sixth with Harvard and NYU Stern School of Business by US News.
Rankings also differ in methodologies, which mean results vary. US News ranks University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and NYU Stern in fourth and sixth place respectively, while the QS ranking places them outside the top 10, ranking 15th and 17th respectively. INSEAD, which comes fourth in the FT ranking, ranks eighth in the QS ranking.
It is also important to keep in mind that US News only includes North America universities, so results will vary significantly with the FT and QS rankings.
QS MBA Ranking methodology
Data for the QS MBA ranking is collected via surveys of employers, academics, and business school staff.
MBA programs are ranked based on five key metrics, with each given different weighting: Employability (40%); Return on Investment (20%); Entrepreneurship and Alumni Outcomes (15%); Thought Leadership (15%); Class & Faculty Diversity (10%).
Employability is the central metric for the QS MBA Ranking, meaning the higher a program ranks the better your post-MBA jobs prospects are statistically, according to QS.
To be included in the QS MBA ranking, business schools must be accredited by either AACSB, AMBA, or EFMD (EQUIS).
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