Rankings: The 9 best universities in Belgium for 2020/2021

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 2020	THE Ranking 2020	ARWU Ranking 2019
KU Leuven	80	45	85
Ghent University	130	123	66
Université catholique de Louvain	167	152	151
Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)	195	201	201
University of Antwerp	223	198	201
Université libre de Bruxelles	251	201	151
Université de Liège	429	301	201
University of Mons	591	–	901
Hasselt University	–	351	601

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.