Singapore has no university in the top five of the QS Asia University Rankings 2027, after the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) both slipped down the table.
NUS is now joint sixth with China’s Fudan University, while NTU ranks eighth. Both Singapore universities were joint third in the 2026 edition.
QS released the latest regional rankings on 3 November 2026.
Hong Kong And Mainland China Take The Top Five
The University of Hong Kong retained first place, followed by Peking University in second.
Tsinghua University made the biggest climb within the top 10, moving up six places from ninth to third. City University of Hong Kong rose to fourth, while the Chinese University of Hong Kong took fifth.
Hong Kong has five universities in the top 10, mainland China has three, and Singapore has two.
SUTD, SMU And SUSS Move Up
Singapore’s other three universities in the rankings all improved their positions.
| University | 2026 Rank | 2027 Rank |
|---|---|---|
| Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) | 169 | 88 |
| Singapore Management University (SMU) | 122 | 90 |
| Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) | 627 | 562 |
SUTD’s 81-place jump brought it into Asia’s top 100 for the first time.
There were also strengths beyond the overall positions. QS said Singapore had the highest average scores across seven indicators among locations with at least five ranked institutions. These included employer reputation, citations per paper and the proportion of international students.
Why These Results Differ From The World Rankings
These are QS’s 2027 Asia rankings, which cover more than 1,700 universities across the region.
The regional table uses 11 indicators, with additional measures and different weightings from the QS World University Rankings.
They include academic and employer reputation, the ratio of academic staff to students, research output and research impact. Citations per paper, for example, measures how often research papers are cited by other research.
The Asia rankings also assess the proportions of incoming and outgoing exchange students. Those two measures are not used in the global rankings.
What NUS And NTU Said
In a response to Lianhe Zaobao, NUS highlighted that it remained the highest-ranked university in Singapore and Southeast Asia. It pointed to its strengths in academic performance, employer recognition, international engagement and research impact.
NTU told the newspaper that different ranking methods could produce changes from year to year. It also highlighted its separate result in the QS World University Rankings 2027, where it placed 12th globally and third among Asian universities.
