Welcome to the Guardian University Guide 2026. It can feel like it’s all change in universities these days – exams are increasingly a thing of the past, you can tune into lectures online, and now there’s the tricky business of working out whether ChatGPT is your studying friend or foe.
This year’s guide will help you understand how technology is reshaping the university experience, and how to make the most of it – from landing a place on a course you love, to getting ready for the jobs of the future.
The Guardian rankings will help you figure out which universities give their students the best experience, rather than just showing you which are strongest in academic research, like most other league tables.
We rank universities through eight different scores, which form a total out of 100. These include what students say about their teaching and feedback in the annual National Student Survey.
We also look at how big class sizes are through the student-to-staff ratio and how much universities spend on teaching each student. Other areas covered are students’ A-level grades and whether their academic performance improves at university (the value-added score), and how likely they are to persevere with their course. There’s also data on how many students get graduate jobs 15 months after leaving university. For each metric, we use the most recent data available at the time of publication. Any blank spaces mean there is data missing, so we focus on the other measures.
In the guide, you will find our overall league table of UK universities as well as individual subject profiles and tables. This year, we have a special table showing you the universities and courses that graduates were least likely to regret. We’ve also got lots of advice to help you make up your mind and start planning for university, from how to take advantage of clearing to which universities offer a buzzing student nightlife.
The rankings change annually, and some universities may benefit from temporary measures such as funding boosts or changes to their student intake. Don’t forget that universities languishing at the bottom of the overall table can be top for certain subjects – so check out our subject tables and profiles to build up a full picture.
