The Financial Times (FT) rolled out their Global MBA ranking for 2026 and we review where their top 100 programs landed.
To start, here is a quick look at the top 10 of The Financial Times 2026 Global MBA rankings (2025 positions are in parentheses):
| Ranking | School |
|---|---|
| 1 | MIT Sloan School of Management (6) |
| 2 | INSEAD (4 tie) |
| 3 | The Wharton School (1) |
| 4 (tie) | Iese Business School (3) |
| 4 (tie) | London Business School (7) |
| 6 | HEC Paris (9) |
| 7 | Esade Business School (8) |
| 8 | CEIBS (12) |
| 9 | Berkeley Haas (15 tie) |
| 10 | Harvard Business School (13 tie) |
This year, MIT Sloan surged to the top spot, moving from #6 in 2025 to #1. INSEAD claimed second position while the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School slipped a couple to #3. Iese Business School and London Business School round out the top five.
Everyone in the rest of the top 10 moved up compared to last year. HEC Paris is up three spots to #9 while Esade slid up one to #7. CEIBS, Berkeley Haas and Harvard Business School all cracked the top ten from their positions last year.
Two schools in the top 10 last year, Columbia Business School and SDA Bocconi, are notably absent this year. They did not meet the alumni survey participation threshold. The absence of Stanford GSB, last ranked #23 in 2024, continues to baffle.
Clear Admit Co-Founder Graham Richmond notes, “The Financial Times ranking is not ‘prestige-based’—it’s ‘model-based.’ They aren’t asking: ‘Which MBA is most selective, most powerful, most transformative?’ They are instead asking: ‘Which MBA produces the best outcomes according to our formula?’ The Financial Times ranking is less of a ‘prestige leaderboard’ and more of an outcomes model that heavily rewards international mobility, value-for-money, and global diversity metrics. That framework naturally favors schools like ESADE, CEIBS, Nanyang, and ISB—while many elite U.S. programs, even those with unmatched brand power, can be structurally disadvantaged by higher tuition costs and more domestically concentrated career outcomes.”
FT Global MBA Ranking 2026: Top U.S. MBA Programs
The Financial Times MBA ranking looks at business schools worldwide, but this can be a challenging task in light of the vast differences from market to market. Richmond comments, “Wharton and MIT do well because they combine the global footprint of an international program with the salary outcomes of an elite U.S. one — they’re basically two of the few American schools that can dominate two key elements of the Financial Times formula. Also, keep in mind that rankings like the Financial Times are great at capturing predictable salary outcomes, but they struggle to measure entrepreneurship and equity-based wealth creation, which is often where schools like Stanford and Harvard often shine.”
As such, we like to break out the regions to look at each one individually. In the U.S. market, the top 20 schools in 2026 (ranking in parentheses) are as follows:
- MIT: Sloan School of Management (1)
- The Wharton School (3)
- UC Berkeley: Haas (9)
- Harvard Business School (10)
- Northwestern University: Kellogg School of Management (11)
- Cornell University: Johnson (15)
- Duke University Fuqua School of Business (16)
- Yale School of Management (17, tie)
- University of Virginia: Darden (19)
- University of Chicago: Booth (20)
- New York University: Stern (23)
- Dartmouth College: Tuck (26)
- UCLA Anderson School of Management (32)
- University of Michigan: Ross (34, tie)
- Washington University: Olin (37)
- Rice Business (38)
- UNC Kenan-Flagler (40)
- Carnegie Mellon Tepper (41, tie)
- University of Texas at Austin: McCombs (41, tie)
- Georgia Tech Scheller (44)
The biggest gains in ranking overall took place outside of the top 20 U.S. list; Miami Herbert jumped 21 spots from #99 to #78 and Notre Dame Mendoza saw a 14-spot gain over 2025 to $61 in 2026.
Other North American programs took some considerable dips. UT Dallas lost 14 spots to land at #68 this year. UCLA Anderson, while still making the top 20 of U.S. programs, fell from #19 last year to #32 overall. Both Emory Goizueta and Washington Foster fell 11 positions to #56 and #45, respectively.
FT Global MBA Ranking 2026: Top European and Asian MBA Programs
Looking at Europe, the top 10 programs are as follows (2026 ranking in parentheses):
- INSEAD (2)
- Iese Business School (4, tie)
- London Business School (4, tie)
- HEC Paris (6)
- Esade (7)
- Cambridge Judge (17, tie)
- IE Business School (21)
- ESCP Business School (22)
- Essec Business School (24)
- University of Oxford: Saïd (27, tie)
Outside of the European top 10, Cranfield moved up 27 spaces compared to last year, coming in at #55. ESSEC leapt 23 spots compared to last year to #24.
For Asia, the top five business schools line up in this order (2026 ranking in parentheses):
- CEIBS (8)
- Indian School of Business (12, tie)
- Nanyang Business School, NTU Singapore (12, tie)
- Peking University: Guanghua (14)
- HKUST (24, tie)
There are many familiar names in the top five Asian business schools. CEIBS made a jump from #12 to #8, while ISB improved significantly from #27 to #12. Further down the list, IIM Bangalore gained 23 spots to land at #34.
Ranking Methodology
While 125 schools participated in the 2025 edition, 128 met the participation criteria this year. FT ranks the top 100 MBA programs in the world using 21 different criteria. Eight of these are alumni-based, making up 56 percent of the ranking. To be included in the ranking, schools need at least a 20 percent response rate and a minimum of 20 responses total from Class of 2022 alumni. Because of disruption from the Covid-19 pandemic, Financial Times considered schools with a lower response rate. A total of 6,265 alumni completed their survey, with an overall response rate of 33 per cent.
See here for more details on the ranking methodology.
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