MIT Sloan School of Management.
QS BEST IN CLASS
QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) is a British-based admissions events company that conducts rankings for online, executive, and full-time MBA programs. It also ranks MBA specializations and business master’s degrees.
“Executive MBA programmes remain one of the most compelling investments a mid-career professional can make. Salary uplifts are well-documented, peer networks are invaluable, and demand for high-quality cohort-based programmes continues to grow. For organisations willing to sponsor talent, the return, in retention, capability and leadership pipeline, is equally hard to ignore,” says QS President Nunzio Quacquarelli.
While EMBA rankings are a useful guide, they are not as closely scrutinized as MBA rankings. A large number of EMBA choices are made based on geography, because executives want to attend the best program in their city or region to cut down on travel for in-person classes. (New hybrid and online options are making this less of a concern.)
QS ranks EMBAs based on five metric groups, with data collected from its two long-standing surveys – the QS Global Employer Survey and the QS Academic Survey, according to its methodology.
Schools were also asked to submit EMBA specific data.
Its five metric groups include:
- Employer Reputation (30% weight): This is collected through the employer survey sent to evaluate sentiment of thousands of companies and hiring managers around the globe. QS has administered the survey for more than 20 years, so gives the greatest weight to the most recent responses.
- Academic Reputation & Thought Leadership (25%): This is collected through QS’ academic survey which surveys schools on their perceptions of peer schools’ reputations. Based on the results, it aims to measure a school’s research, academic partnerships, their educational innovativeness, and greater impact.
- Career Progression (20%): This category looks at mean percentage salary increase and percent of graduates promoted within 12 months of program completion.
- Executive Profile (15%): Considers average years of work experience, average years of managerial experience, and the percentage of students with C-suite experience in the enrolled class.
- Class Diversity (10%): Considers percent of women and number of nationalities in the enrolled class.
27 JOINT EMBAs RANKED
QS also ranked 31 joint EMBAs run by two or more global business schools, up from 27 in 2025. The Trium Global Executive MBA operated by New York University’s Stern School of Business, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and HEC Paris finished first for the third straight year.
Over 18 months, Trium students travel to six cities across four continents. The first three modules, each lasting two weeks, build the foundation at the partner schools. At LSE in London, students examine international relations, conflict, and cooperation through political science and economics. At Stern in New York, they study finance, data analytics, risk, and leadership just steps away from Wall Street. And in Paris, HEC faculty teach strategy implementation, marketing, operations, and innovation.
The final three modules focus on advanced topics hand-picked by TRIUM leadership in relevant and innovative cities. Recent cohorts have traveled to Seoul to study technology and entrepreneurship in Asia including the innovation ecosystems of China, Japan, and South Korea.
Trium celebrated its 25th anniversary in October 2025.
Following Trium in the QS ranking is the joint program from UCLA Anderson School of Management and the National University of Singapore, and the Global EMBA from London Business School and Columbia Business School.
The full joint ranking is displayed in the table below.
QS Executive MBA Rankings 2026: Joint Program |
||||||||||
2026 Rank |
2025 Rank |
School |
Location |
Campuses |
Employer Reputation Score |
Thought Leadership Score |
Executive Profile Score |
Diversity Score |
Career Outcomes Score |
Overall Score |
| 1 | 1 | Trium Global MBA/ LSE – Stern – HEC Paris | France | London | 94.7 | 96.1 | 92.7 | 96.3 | 84.4 | 100 |
| 2 | 2 | UCLA-NUS Executive MBA | Singapore | Singapore & US | 97.4 | 89.7 | 100 | 65.6 | 97.7 | 99.7 |
| 3 | 4 | EMBA Global/ LBS – Columbia | United Kingdom | London | 100 | 100 | 45.9 | 77.3 | 91.7 | 92.9 |
| 4 | 3 | Tsinghua-INSEAD Executive EMBA | China (Mainland) | Beijing | 89.9 | 93.6 | 87 | 65.7 | 89.2 | 92.6 |
| =5 | 6 | Kellogg/HKUST | Hong Kong SAR | Hong Kong, Chicago (IL), Miami (FL) | 97.4 | 87.3 | 45.2 | 60.5 | 89.1 | 83.7 |
| =5 | 8 | Kellogg-WHU Executive MBA | Germany | Vallendar/Düsseldorf | 98.7 | 85.8 | 67.8 | 59.2 | 72.5 | 83.7 |
| 7 | 5 | IE – Brown Executive MBA | Spain | Madrid, Providence | 79.2 | 59.5 | 84.6 | 99.8 | 98.9 | 82.8 |
| 8 | 9 | ESSEC & MANNHEIM Executive MBA | France | Paris, Mannheim, Singapore | 74 | 80.8 | 66.3 | 77.8 | 95 | 79.9 |
| 9 | 7 | Rotman – SDA Bocconi Global Executive MBA | Italy | Milan | 77.9 | 72.9 | 54.5 | 89.3 | 91.9 | 77 |
| 10 | 10 | Guanghua-Kellogg | China Mainland | Beijing | 97.6 | 86.6 | 37.2 | 37.9 | 66.2 | 71.8 |
| 11 | 11 | Kellogg-Schulich Executive MBA | United States | Toronto | 96.8 | 85.6 | 23.3 | 39.2 | 70.1 | 69.5 |
| 12 | Hanken- Stockholm Executive MBA | Finland | Helsinki | 53.3 | 54.5 | 88.3 | 89.8 | 100 | 69.3 | |
| 13 | 12 | WU Executive Academy – Minnesota (Carlson) Global Executive MBA | Austria | Vienna | 68.9 | 70.2 | 52.2 | 59.6 | 64.7 | 59.4 |
| 14 | McGill – HEC Montréal Executive MBA | Canada | Montreal | 49.4 | 65.8 | 90.2 | 69.3 | 60.8 | 57.8 | |
| 15 | 13 | Washington/Fudan | China (Mainland) | Shanghai | 63.3 | 61.6 | 65.2 | 58.3 | 65.4 | 56.7 |
| 16 | 15 | EGADE – W. P. Carey Executive MBA | Mexico | Mexico City | 57.6 | 64.1 | 93.1 | 20 | 33.6 | 46.3 |
| 17 | 16 | WashU Olin – IIT Bombay Executive MBA | United States | Mumbai | 60.7 | 51.2 | 73.5 | 37.8 | 43.4 | 44.1 |
| 18 | 14 | Hong Kong University/Fudan | China Mainland | Hong Kong | 58.3 | 68.3 | 23.5 | 37 | 54.6 | 41.5 |
| 19 | 20 | UBI – Middlesex MBA | Belgium | Brussels, Shanghai, and online | 24 | 23.3 | 64.9 | 100 | 99 | 41.4 |
| 20 | 17 | The Lisbon MBA Executive | Portugal | Lisbon | 49.9 | 39.3 | 66.9 | 50.4 | 61 | 40.7 |
| 21 | =18 | Pacifico – Esade Corporate MBA | Peru | Lima, Perú | 74.2 | 38.8 | 80 | 25.3 | 20 | 38.3 |
| 22 | SIU Triple Executive MBA | Switzerland | Zurich | 20 | 20 | 98.1 | 70.1 | 74.6 | 34.1 | |
| 23 | =18 | BI Norwegian/Fudan | China Mainland | Hong Kong | 54.9 | 61.5 | 20 | 65.3 | 28.2 | 33.2 |
| 24 | 22 | XJTLU- Liverpool International MBA | China (Mainland) | Suzhou | 41.3 | 39.3 | 46.2 | 64.7 | 51.5 | 31.6 |
| 25 | Zagreb ZSEM- Luxembourg LSB Global Executive MBA | Croatia | Zagreb | 41.3 | 24.1 | 72.3 | 62.1 | 47 | 30.2 | |
| 26 | 27 | Durham – EBS Executive MBA | Germany | Östrich-Winkel | 58.4 | 47.2 | 23.7 | 52.3 | 27 | 28.1 |
| 27 | 21 | Xiamen/Tulane | China Mainland | Xiamen | 47.2 | 25.8 | 77.7 | 61.3 | 20.3 | 26.7 |
| 28 | Maastricht – Corvinus Executive MBA | Hungary | Budapest | 38.9 | 32 | 31.2 | 63.1 | 56.2 | 25.8 | |
| 29 | 25 | ROCA Executive MBA (BBS-ASE/ESG-UQAM) | Romania | Bucharest | 24 | 21.4 | 77 | 64.8 | 51.3 | 24.2 |
| 30 | 26 | CENTRUM PUCP – Tulane Global Executive MBA | Peru | Lima | 49.4 | 35.5 | 27 | 22.7 | 40.3 | 20.3 |
| 31 | 24 | Almaty – GSOM St Petersburg Executive MBA | Kazakhstan | Almaty | 36.2 | 27.9 | 72.1 | 26.9 | 33 | 20 |
The full 2026 QS Executive MBA Global Rankings include 216 ranked schools across seven regions. Click through the following pages to see the results. You can also see more detail, as well as the seven regional rankings here.
Next page: The QS 2025 Global Executive MBA Ranking, No. 1-50