South Africa’s universities have landed on a new global scoreboard and one local institution has just pulled off a major climb.

UJ Breaks Into the Global Top 500

The University of Johannesburg (UJ) has entered the global top 500 in the 2026 Webometrics ranking after improving its position from 545 in January 2025 to 491 in January 2026

Webometrics listed 124 institutions from South Africa in its 2026 global higher education ranking which includes all 26 public universities.

What the Webometrics Ranking Measures

The Webometrics ranking has been published since 2004 by Spain’s Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). It aims to promote open access to knowledge generated by universities and focuses on the quantity and quality of higher education web content.

The model uses a mix of webometric and bibliometric indicators. The three main indicators are visibility (50%), excellence (40%) and openness (10%). Web data was gathered in early January 2026 while bibliometric data covers 2020 to 2024 for excellence and 2021 to 2025 for openness.

How South Africa’s Top Universities Ranked

At the top locally, the University of Cape Town (UCT) stayed number one in South Africa with a global rank of 273. It was followed by Wits (403) and the University of Pretoria (448).

Seven South African universities ranked in the global top 1,000: UCT, Wits, Pretoria, Johannesburg, KwaZulu-Natal (581), Unisa (744) and North-West University (876).

A Rough Year for Most Campuses

While UJ climbed, the overall picture is a bit grim: 21 of the 26 public universities dropped in the global rankings. Stellenbosch took the hardest knock, falling from 442 globally in January 2025 to 8,925 in January 2026 and dropping to 24th in South Africa.