In the 2025 edition of the Shanghai Ranking (Academic Ranking of World Universities, ARWU), seven Polish universities have been ranked among the world’s top 1,000. Compared with the 2024 ranking, the overall number of Polish universities on the list has decreased by one. The highest-ranked institution remains the University of Warsaw, which continues to be placed within the top 500.

Other Polish universities included in the ranking are: Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Warsaw University of Technology, and Wrocław University of Science and Technology, all of which are positioned in the list of 901–1000.

The Shanghai Ranking’s Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) was first released in 2003 by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Since 2009, it has been published by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, which annually evaluates more than 2,500 universities worldwide and ranks the top 1,000. In addition, the consultancy also publishes the Global Ranking of Academic Subjects and the Global Ranking of Sport Science Schools and Departments.

The ARWU is based on six indicators, including: the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of highly cited researchers, the number of papers published in Nature and Science, and the volume of publications indexed in the Science Citation Index – Expanded (SCIE) and the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI).