Rankings: The 9 best universities in Belgium for 2021/2022

For a small nation, Belgium punches well above its weight when it comes to academic excellence: Many Belgian universities defend international top rankings and combine cutting-edge research with world-class teaching.

Among Belgium’s prime universities you will find KU Leuven, Ghent University, Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) - all of them rank solidly among the world’s top 200 institutions. With so many high-quality options, it’s no wonder that thousands of international students every year enrol at Belgian universities.

Top ranked universities in Belgium

University	QS Ranking 2021	THE Ranking 2021	ARWU Ranking 2020
KU Leuven	84	45	97
Ghent University	135	103	66
Université catholique de Louvain	189	164	151
Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)	200	251	301
University of Antwerp	238	170	301
Université libre de Bruxelles	250	201	101
Université de Liège	451	351	201
Hasselt University	456	351	601
University of Mons	651	–	–

Explained: How do the university rankings work?

The QS World University Rankings are among the most important, most-referenced rankings. The QS ranking relies heavily on its academic survey, asking thousands of academics worldwide about the reputation of universities.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings (or the THE Rankings for short) compile a wide range of statistics. Equal weight is put on teaching quality, research excellence, and research impact through citations (meaning how often a university’s research is referenced elsewhere).

The Academic Ranking of World Universities by Shanghai Jiao Tong University (often just Shanghai Ranking, or ARWU) focuses on research output and quality, for example measured by the number of published and cited scientific papers and the number of staff or alumni winning the Nobel Prize or Fields Medal.

Study in Belgium

Belgium is a multilingual nation in Western Europe, where French, Flemish/Dutch and German are spoken - and countless other languages, because its capital Brussels is also the de-facto capital of the European Union.