Liszt Academy maintains its high position in world ranking
This year's QS World University Rankings by Subject placed the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music 24th in the Performing Arts category and 12th in music education, which means it is among the best higher education institutions in the world.
The latest edition of one of the best-known higher education rankings, the UK's Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings by Subject 2025, compares more than 1,500 universities worldwide in 55 individual subjects across five broad disciplines.
The Liszt Academy in Budapest was ranked 24th in the standard Performing Arts category, retaining its top ranking as it stands out among Hungarian universities: no other university in the country has done so well in its own field of study.
In the rankings, it is featured alongside such universities as Yale, McGill University in Montreal and the St Petersburg Conservatoire, among others, and has outdone other prestigious universities such as the Conservatoire of Lyon, the Swedish, the Norwegian academies as well as the music universities of Zurich, Leipzig, Berlin, and of Central and Eastern Europe.
The Liszt Ferenc University of Music moved up in the narrower music category introduced last year, coming 12th, after being 15th in 2024, ahead of, for example, the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. In this field, QS only looks at the top 20 music universities worldwide, so to be ranked here is a huge prestige. In the EU, the Liszt Academy is on the 4th place.
Five criteria are taken into account in the subject-rankings: the prestige and reputation of the institution in the academic world, which is measured through interviews with more than 150,000 professionals worldwide. In the Performing Arts category, the reputation is the most highly regarded, at 60 per cent. Less weight is given to employer recognition, the range of international collaborations and, because the performing arts is a specialised field, the lowest proportion of publications and citations.
Dr. Csaba Kutnyánszky, Vice-President for Education, said: "The fact that the Liszt Academy has retained its leading position in the world confirms that the institution is on the right track with its work in recent years, which has made its international collaborations and research activities more visible, and its internationally recognised teachers further enhancing the institution's standing through their masterclasses and performances abroad.”
Research activities of the Liszt Academy (such as at the Central European Music History Research Group in the Musicology Department or at the Church Music Department) as well as at the Kodály Institute and the Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum and Research Centre are internationally recognised as outstanding. Researchers at the Academy are regularly invited to work abroad, and staffers at the Liszt Museum play a leading role, for example in coordinating the work of the international network of Liszt memorial sites, while the Kodály Institute enjoys international fame on account of the Kodály Method and a variety of educational programmes based on it (Kodály Hub, Move mi Music, PRESTO). In addition, many of the Academy's teachers are also internationally renowned performers, and its students are much in demand and are accepted into prestigious ensembles both in Hungary and abroad.
The subject rankings in English are available by clicking here.
The rankings for performing arts can be found here.
The Liszt Academy's page in the QS database can be found here, including rankings and scores.