The University of St Gallen has topped the Financial Times Masters in Management ranking again. That is the fifteenth time the Swiss school has finished first, and its third in a row since reclaiming the position from HEC Paris in 2024. 

Pretty much everything else in the top 10 has changed, and Linkedin is going to be buzzing with the headlines:

That is a remarkable amount of movement at the top of the league table, and there are other unexpected results and trends further down.

The Paris School of Business, that re-entered the FT MiM ranking 2025 at #43 after placing at #95 in 2022 has made a dramatic jump of 26 places to #17, with a confusing mix of among the best salary increase, career progress and international mobility results that sharply contrast with some of the worst ratings for career services and alumni network.

Meanwhile ten of a record fourteen Indian business schools in the ranking have climbed, with IIM Bangalore at #21 and XLRI Xavier School of Management up 25 places to #33.

Georgetown McDonough enters for the first time, joining Hult Business School as the only two US business schools in the MiM ranking despite a growing number of other top US schools now offering this highly popular early career business masters..

Another year, another FT Masters in Management Ranking that is anything but business as usual. BlueSky Thinking examines how the global map of management studies has changed.

Here is the top 25, with the full results in the Financial Times Business School Rankings section.

Nova and the rise of Portugal

Nova School of Business and Economics is second in the world. Ten years ago it was seventeenth. In 2024 it was eighth, last year fourth, and now it sits behind only St Gallen.

Nova’s weighted salary is $131,640, its overall satisfaction score of 9.53 is the third highest in the ranking, which though not a weighted score in the methodology tells you something about how alumni feels about the place. With one of the strongest scores (92%) for Aims Achieved, and a campus that is a 3-minute walk from the beach what’s not to love?

Portugal now has five schools in the top hundred, up from two in 2016, and all of them are on the rise with Catolica Lisbon reaching the top 25, ISEG entering straight at #59 and Porto Business School climbing 29 places. For a country of eleven million people, that is a striking return.

Vlerick and a focus on careers

Vlerick Business School has reached #6, tied with ESCP. It was fourteenth last year, twenty-second in 2024, and thirty-first a decade ago. This is the first time Vlerick has been inside the top ten of this ranking, and the first time it has been in the top ten of anything the FT publishes.

Vlerick finishes first in the world for careers service and first in the world for alumni network, the only school to top both. It is fourth for carbon footprint and second for teaching on ESG and net zero. Its satisfaction score of 9.43 is fourth highest overall.

They are the metrics that reward a well-run programme where the careers team has the time for everyone and alumni get back to you, and the results say the graduates noticed.

Rabat and a first for Africa

Rabat Business School at the International University of Rabat is tenth, up from twentieth last year and thirty-second in 2024. It was not in the table at all in 2016.

Rabat records the highest overall satisfaction score in the entire ranking at 9.67, and the largest salary increase in the world at 81.8 per cent. It is fifth for career progress and eleventh for international work mobility. 

It is also the first African business school to reach the top ten of an FT business school ranking. 

The International University of Rabat was founded in 2010 as Morocco’s first higher education institution built through a public-private partnership. Rabat Business School earned AACSB accreditation in 2020 and EQUIS in 2025, and expects AMBA later this year, which would make it the first Triple Crown school in North Africa and only the fifth on the continent.

The World Bank projects that the African continent will supply most of the world’s new workers over the next quarter century. But until this week, it had no presence whatsoever at the top of the league tables that rank the education of its future managers.

One school in Rabat does not fix that. But it does remove the excuse that it cannot be done.

The Chinese vanishing act

Last year Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management was #4 in the world and Tongji was #8. This year neither appears in the FT MiM ranking.

Shanghai Jiao Tong’s Antai College is now the only Chinese school in the ranking. It is third, its highest ever placing, up from #6 last year and #33 in 2016, and it comes second for value for money and third for careers service. But China’s representation has fallen from three schools to one in a single year, and two of those departures were from the top ten.

The FT does not announce why a school leaves a ranking, and there are several possible explanations. A school can choose not to submit, or fail to reach the required alumni response rate, or fall foul of the data checks. 

A ranking that looked, twelve months ago, as though it was tilting decisively towards China now has a single Chinese entrant, while India has gone from eleven schools to fourteen and is comfortably the second largest national contingent after France.

Anyone building a strategy around the internationalisation of these tables should note how quickly the picture can change, and how little explanation accompanies the change.

Paris School of Business and how fast you can climb

The single largest climb in the upper half of the table belongs to Paris School of Business, up twenty-six places to joint #17 from #43 when the programme re-entered the FT ranking last year.

PSB is now first in the world for international work mobility, up from eighth. It is second for career progress, up from ninth. Its aims achieved figure of 93.5 per cent is the highest of any school in the ranking. Its weighted salary rose of $94,098 is a 66.8 per cent increase on what its students were earning when they completed the course, the fifth largest gain in the ranking.

And yet the same school ranks ninety-ninth out of a hundred for careers service, and ninety-ninth for alumni network. Its overall satisfaction score of 8.14 is in the bottom 10 of the 100 ranked programmes. Its actual salary, as opposed to its salary growth, is forty-eighth.

Of all the results in the 2026 FT Masters in Management Ranking, this may be the most surprising. The London Business School is #16, and the Paris School of Business just one place lower. How have they achieved such a turnaround from ranking #95 in 2022?

Paris School of Business emerged as the new name for what was originally ESG, founded in 1974. The Grande Ecole holds the Triple Crown of international accreditations from AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS, and offers a range of MSc programmes in English from Hospitality Management to Supply Chain.

In the 2022 FT MiM ranking, the MiM ranked #93 for Career Progress. Now it is #2. Aims achieved in 2022 were twelfth from bottom, now they are #1. Four years ago the International Work Mobility rank was #81. Now it is the best of any Masters of Management in the ranking.

None of this is evidence of wrongdoing, and the school may have radically transformed the programme and its outcomes in a few short years. But the turbo-charged performance will raise eyebrows, and the internal contradiction of the 2026 results is difficult to reconcile.

The same alumni survey that placed PSB ninety-ninth for careers service and ninety-ninth for its alumni network also returned the highest aims achieved figure in the world and the second best career progress score anywhere. Those answers came from the same graduates, about the same school, on the same form. Alumni who rate their careers service second from bottom do not usually report that their goals were met more completely than at any other business school on earth.

Perhaps a small cohort, recruited internationally and placed internationally, may have found its own jobs, marked the school honestly on the help it gave, and still been delighted with where it ended up. Three years of strong salary growth improves anyone’s view of their own decisions.

The FT runs its own data checks and has removed schools from rankings before without announcing it. It is the only party that can see the individual responses. The rest of us can note that a school its own graduates rank ninety-ninth out of a hundred for looking after their careers now sits seventeenth in the world, one place behind London Business School, and wonder how both of those things are true at the same time.

Where are the US business schools?

There are two American schools in the 2026 ranking: Hult International Business School at joint #48, and Georgetown McDonough, a new entry, at joint #92. That is it. Canada contributes Western’s Ivey at joint #64.

The number of participating schools has barely moved in a decade. In 2016 the only American school in the table was Arizona State at #82.

This is not because US schools have ignored the pre-experience management masters. Northwestern Kellogg, Michigan Ross and Duke Fuqua all run one, and the degree has grown steadily in the United States as applicants look for an alternative to an MBA they are not yet ready for. Chicago Booth added to the growing list, welcoming their first class in the Fall of 2024 and will be eligible to participate in the FT MiM Ranking in 2028.

Many simply decline to enter, and it’s not hard to see why. A substantial block of the criteria rewards international course experience, international work mobility, international faculty, international students and an international board. A one-year programme in Evanston, Ann Arbor or Durham, recruiting substantially from the domestic market and placing graduates into American firms, is being scored against a criterion it was never designed to meet.

The result is a global ranking of masters in management from which the world’s largest management education market is almost entirely absent, by choice. 

The 5 biggest climbers, and the 5 biggest fallers

Beyond the top ten, the 2026 table moved further and faster than usual. Three schools rose twenty-six places or more, and three fell by thirty.

The five biggest climbers

• Católica Porto Business School (Portugal), Masters in Management: up 29 places, 95 to 66
• Antwerp Management School (Belgium), Master in Global Management: up 27 places, 91 to joint 64
• Paris School of Business (France), MSc International Management: up 26 places, 43 to joint 17
• Louvain School of Management (Belgium), Master in Business Engineering: up 26 places, 74 to joint 48
• University of Sydney Business School (Australia), Master of Management: up 26 places, 77 to 51

Just outside, Iscte Business School and XLRI Xavier School of Management each rose 25.

Two Portuguese schools and two Belgian ones in the top five is not a coincidence. Belgium sent Vlerick into the top ten in the same year that Antwerp and Louvain each rose more than twenty-five places. Portugal put Nova at second while Porto Business School and Iscte climbed twenty-nine and twenty-five.

The five biggest fallers

• Cranfield School of Management (UK), MSc in Management: down 30 places, 69 to 99
• Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), MSc in International Management: down 30 places, 38 to joint 68
• EM Strasbourg Business School (France), Master in Management: down 30 places, 45 to joint 75
• Burgundy School of Business (France), Master in Management: down 29 places, 49 to joint 78
• TUM School of Management (Germany), Master in Management and Technology: down 26 places, 54 to 80

EBS Business School also fell 26 places, to joint 78th, tying TUM for fifth. Germany accounts for two of the six, France for two more.

What is behind these double-digit swings?

Almost none of these schools changed what their graduates earn. TUM’s weighted salary went from $116,984 to $116,933, a difference of fifty-one dollars, and it fell twenty-six places. Cranfield’s moved by eight dollars and it fell thirty. Iscte’s fell by fifty-five dollars and it rose twenty-five.

What moved was often what alumni said. Satisfaction fell from 8.49 to 7.80, the second lowest score in the ranking. Careers service dropped from fifty-second to sixty-sixth, alumni network from sixty-eighth to eighty-second, and aims achieved from 86 per cent to 83.

Behind those numbers the programme itself has changed shape. Enrolment fell from eighty-three students to thirty-one, now the smallest class in the top hundred, and the course shortened from fifteen months to twelve. Not everything went backwards. Cranfield climbed from twenty-third to thirteenth in the world for international work mobility.

Fifty-six per cent of this ranking comes from what alumni report. A school can change nothing about its fees, its faculty or its salaries and still travel thirty places in either direction, because a different set of graduates filled in the form this year.

Comparing the FT MiM Ranking of 2026 with 2016

Comparing over a ten-year period shows how much of the movement is structural rather than annual.

India has gone from three schools to fourteen, the single biggest shift in the ranking’s composition. Indian schools also occupy all five top places for weighted salary, led by IIM Ahmedabad at $199,706, a consequence of domestic placement salaries converted at purchasing power parity.

The UK has gone from sixteen schools to nine. Durham, Strathclyde, Leeds, Lancaster, Bradford, Exeter, Bath, Aston and Glasgow have all left the table since 2016. But Imperial Business School had a strong showing this year, climbing 9 places to #38 with Bayes Business School rising 16 places to #62. King’s Business School is a new entrant at #92, but there is still no sign of London School of Economics (LSE) coming back to a ranking they left in 2013, and UCL School of Management contineus to stay away.

France remains the largest contingent with twenty-three schools, but its grip on the top has loosened. In 2016, seventeen of the top fifty were French. Today it is thirteen.

Germany is up from five schools to eight, Portugal from two to five, Sweden from one to three.

Among individual schools, the ten-year climbers are led by Prague University of Economics and Business, up seventy places from #81 to #11, followed by Cologne up thirty-two, Shanghai Jiao Tong up thirty, Católica Lisbon up twenty-seven and Vlerick up twenty-five. Going the other way, EBS Business School has fallen sixty-six places, Rennes fifty-nine, Copenhagen Business School fifty-eight and Solvay fifty-two. 

The top five in 2026 for each FT MiM Ranking category

The overall table captures most of the attention, but the many criteria highlight the schools that are exceptional in ceratin areas. These are the leaders in each category.

Weighted salary IIM Ahmedabad ($199,706), IIM Bangalore ($189,428), XLRI ($183,994), IIM Calcutta ($179,953), SP Jain ($166,372). An entirely Indian top five.

Salary increase Rabat (81.8%), Kozminski (78.7%), Católica Porto (73.2%), Iscte (68.6%), Paris School of Business (66.8%). Read alongside starting salaries, as above.

Aims achieved Paris School of Business (93.5%), Nova (92.2%), Rabat (91.3%), St Gallen (91.0%), London Business School (90.9%).

Careers service Vlerick, SP Jain, Shanghai Jiao Tong Antai, WHU, IIM Calcutta.

Alumni network Vlerick, St Gallen, WHU, Shanghai Jiao Tong Antai, HHL Leipzig. 

Career progress Católica Porto, Paris School of Business, Shanghai Jiao Tong Antai, Ljubljana, Rabat. 

Value for money Copenhagen Business School, Shanghai Jiao Tong Antai, ZHAW, Ljubljana, Louvain. 

International work mobility Paris School of Business, St Gallen, Trinity College Dublin, INSEAD, Rotterdam.

International course experience Stockholm School of Economics, Iéseg and Excelia all tied first, then ESCP and Prague.

ESG and net zero teaching Skema, Vlerick, Stockholm School of Economics, IESE, EMLyon.

Carbon footprint SDA Bocconi, then IE and BI Norwegian tied, Vlerick, Esade.

International students ESCP (98%), then St Gallen, London Business School, Hult and Warwick, all on 97%.

International faculty Iéseg (96%), ESCP (94%), Imperial (94%), INSEAD (92%), London Business School (92%).

Overall satisfaction Rabat (9.67), SP Jain (9.60), Nova (9.53), Vlerick (9.43), Católica Lisbon (9.37).

Female students: Sixteen schools report exactly 50 per cent female students, and twelve of them are from France. For the highest number of women students, Trinity College Dublin (67%), Copenhagen (66%), Lund (65%), ESMT Berlin (63%), Singapore Management University (63%). 

How to read the 2026 FT MiM Ranking

The obvious reading is that the geography of management education keeps widening, and it does. A Portuguese school at second, a Belgian school at sixth, a Moroccan school at tenth and a Czech school at eleventh would have been unimaginable a decade ago.

The schools rising fastest tend to be small, to recruit students from lower salary bases, and to score heavily on components that reward growth and mobility rather than absolute outcomes. 

That is the case for reading a ranking properly rather than reading its first line. St Gallen won again, and deserved to. But there are schools nobody was watching twelve months ago, and the question is whether the ranking found them or created them.

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