TIME has published the third annual “World’s Top EdTech Companies 2026” ranking, in partnership with Statista, a leading international provider of market and consumer data and rankings. The result of this quantitative study: 500 companies dedicated to the development and provision of educational technologies, encompassing both products and services. Here’s how the winners were selected.
Methodology
Main list
The research project “World’s Top EdTech Companies 2026” is a comprehensive analysis conducted to identify the top performing EdTech companies in the world. First, companies had to primarily focus on developing and providing educational technologies, products or services. The 500 companies with the highest score were awarded as “World’s Top EdTech Companies 2026“
The ranking is built on two pillars: financial strength and industry impact. Statista gathered and scrutinized data from around 6,500 companies through desk research, online application forms and collaborations with other data and market intelligence companies. A company received scores in each of these dimensions, which were then combined into an overall score.
For the first dimension, financial strength, Statista analyzed revenue, funding, and market capitalization data, obtained from publicly available sources like annual reports, company websites, through media monitoring, and via databases. Additionally, company disclosures submitted via an online application form, which was freely accessible via the TIME website, were considered.
For the evaluation of the industry impact, Statista cooperated with The Upright Project and LexisNexis® Intellectual Property Solutions to assess companies in different impact dimensions, encompassing factors such as:
- holistic impact of a company’s product and service portfolio, including its alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and
- quantity and value of a company’s IP (intellectual property) portfolio.
In addition, Statista researched various metrics around web traffic, to assess the relevance of the products and services to the respective target groups.
The evaluation process involved assessing all relevant companies within the global EdTech sector that exhibited above-average performance on financial metrics in their geographical region. Subsequently, the selection was narrowed down to include only those companies that not only excelled financially but also demonstrated significant industry impact within their specific categories. This selection process allowed us to establish our final ranking of the World’s Top EdTech Companies 2026. Once the data was collected and evaluated, it was consolidated and weighted within a scoring model. The final score was calculated as follows: 70% x financial strength score + 30% x impact score. The companies with the highest score were awarded as “World’s Top EdTech Companies 2026” by TIME and Statista.
Rising Stars
Alongside the list of 500 top EdTech companies, Statista and TIME are also publishing a “Rising Stars” ranking highlighting the companies with the highest revenue growth rates over the past three years out of those who submitted company data via the online application process.
Applied criteria:
- company age 10 years and younger
- minimum revenue of 1 million US Dollars in 2024
- revenue growth rate of more than 20 % over the last three years
Disclaimer: The selection of the companies and the definition of the evaluation criteria were based on independent journalistic criteria of TIME and Statista. The evaluation was carried out by the statistics and market research company Statista. TIME and Statista make no claim to the completeness of the companies examined. The ranking only includes companies that qualify according to the criteria described in this document. A position in the ranking is a positive recognition based on research of publicly available data sources at the time and information received via an application process and through collaboration partners. In addition, events after June 4th, 2026, were not considered in the analysis. As such, the results of this list should not be used as the sole source of information for future deliberations. The information provided through this ranking should rather be considered in conjunction with other available information about a company. The quality of companies that are not included in the ranking is not disputed.
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