ATLAS · UNIVERSITIES
Every University on Earth
The world’s seats of learning on one map: 15,144 universities across 201 countries, each coloured by the century it was founded — from the 156 ancient and medieval institutions that have taught for half a millennium or more, down to the modern campuses built in the last hundred years. So you can see at a glance where higher education is old and where it is new. Data is from Wikidata (CC0), a snapshot taken 2026-06-22.
What the colours mean
Every university is tinted by when it was founded. Amber marks the ancient universities founded before 1200— the oldest continuously operating seats of learning on Earth. Gold is the medieval-to-Renaissance institutions (1200–1599), charge-blue the early-modern ones (1600–1899), and radar-green the modern majority (1900 and later). A dim slate marks the institutions whose founding date isn’t recorded. Why a handful of universities are nearly a thousand years old, and how the idea spread across the world, is worth two minutes:
The story of the world’s oldest universities →Universities by country
Where higher education clusters. Open a country for its oldest institution, the spread across the centuries, and how many universities it has.
Every country with a university
United States · India · Japan · Indonesia · Nigeria · China · Germany · Philippines · Russia · South Korea · United Kingdom · Brazil · Bangladesh · Italy · Iran · France · Mexico · Ukraine · Canada · Spain · Turkey · Taiwan · Poland · Pakistan · Argentina · Thailand · Egypt · Chile · Colombia · Iraq · Malaysia · Myanmar · Vietnam · Australia · Peru · Kenya · Algeria · Romania · Tunisia · Uganda · Ghana · Kazakhstan · Democratic Republic of the Congo · Ecuador · Austria · Ireland · South Africa · Portugal · Sudan · Hungary · Switzerland · Morocco · Belarus · Uzbekistan · Ethiopia · United Arab Emirates · Azerbaijan · Serbia · Czech Republic · Bulgaria · Saudi Arabia · Tanzania · Afghanistan · Greece · Belgium · Georgia · Denmark · Singapore · Albania · Finland · Syria · Libya · Slovakia · Lebanon · Nepal · Rwanda · Armenia · Bolivia · Cuba · New Zealand · Venezuela · Norway · Bosnia and Herzegovina · Jordan · Kyrgyzstan · North Korea · Palestine · Sweden · North Macedonia · Lithuania · Nicaragua · Niger · Cambodia · Moldova · Zambia · Israel · Mongolia · Croatia · Paraguay · Senegal · Sri Lanka · Zimbabwe · Benin · Somalia · Bahrain · Burundi · Costa Rica · Latvia · Tajikistan · Cameroon · South Sudan · Yemen · Burkina Faso · Cyprus · El Salvador · Kosovo · Panama · Turkmenistan · Dominican Republic · Guinea · Honduras · Angola · Belize · Chad · Guatemala · Madagascar · Côte d'Ivoire · Mauritius · Oman · Brunei · Haiti · Iceland · Mozambique · Qatar · Uruguay · Bhutan · Kuwait · Liberia · Malawi · Papua New Guinea · Timor-Leste · Vatican City · Botswana · Cape Verde · Eritrea · Guyana · Malta · Slovenia · Aruba · Barbados · Jamaica · Mali · Mauritania · Sierra Leone · Solomon Islands · Antigua and Barbuda · DD · Equatorial Guinea · Eswatini · Fiji · Gabon · Greenland · LI · Maldives · Montenegro · Namibia · Saint Lucia · Suriname · Togo · Trinidad and Tobago · Cayman Islands · Central African Republic · Gambia · Guinea-Bissau · Kiribati · Laos · Lesotho · Luxembourg · Republic of the Congo · Saint Kitts and Nevis · São Tomé and Principe · SM · Tonga · Tuvalu · AD · Anguilla · Bahamas · Comoros · Curaçao · Djibouti · Estonia · Faroe Islands · Grenada · Hong Kong · Isle of Man · Marshall Islands · Micronesia · Saint Vincent and the Grenadines · Samoa · Seychelles · Sint Maarten
About this data
Universities, locations and founding years come from Wikidata, the open, CC0 knowledge base. We map every institution Wikidata classes as a university that has real coordinates and a country. Founding year is recorded for roughly nine in ten; the rest are shown honestly as “date unknown” rather than guessed. This is nota ranking or an accreditation list — it’s a map of where universities physically are and how old they are. As community-maintained data it’s comprehensive but not perfect; we refresh the snapshot periodically rather than calling Wikidata on every visit.