IIM Bangalore Ranking 2026: NIRF, QS & More

IIM Bangalore's PGP ranked 28th in the Financial Times Masters in Management list for 2025. It ranks 21st in the 2026 edition. Its one-year EPGP moved further still, from 57th to 34th in the Financial Times Global MBA Ranking 2026, a 23-place rise. Both international ranks climbed in one year. The domestic rank did not move at all.

The Indian Institute of Management Bangalore holds NIRF's #2 spot in the Management category for 2025, with a score of 81.56, behind only IIM Ahmedabad. Its PGP holds a world ranking of 30th in the QS Masters in Management list for 2026, the best position of any Indian programme in that category. The FT climb makes IIM Bangalore the only Indian B-school in that ranking's global top 25.

Does a rank a few places apart actually mean anything? Read the component scores, not the gap. IIM Bangalore's NIRF score moved from 81.16 in 2024 to 81.56 in 2025, and it held rank 2 in both years. NIRF publishes the five components behind that move, so you can see where the gain came from: Research and Professional Practice rose from 56.71 to 59.04. IIM Ahmedabad stayed ahead in both years. See the IIM Bangalore overview for how this rank sits against fees and placements.

IIM Bangalore's Perception score has held at a perfect 100 for at least two straight years, the only component that did not move at all. Research and Professional Practice showed the sharpest single gain, rising from 56.71 to 59.04, while Outreach and Inclusivity slipped slightly, from 74.54 to 73.27. IIM Bangalore is ranked only in NIRF's Management category. It runs no engineering, law or other faculty stream that would place it elsewhere. See the full IIM Bangalore placement report for the outcome behind this rank.

The QS World University Rankings 2026 portfolio released on 17 September 2025. It placed four IIM Bangalore programmes at India rank 1, each in its own category:

• PGP: #30 globally in QS Masters in Management, #2 in Asia, India's top-ranked programme in this specific category.
• EPGP: #52 globally in QS Global MBA Rankings, #8 in Asia.
• PGPBA: Top 60 globally in QS Master's in Business Analytics 2026, #4 in Asia.
• PGPEM: #50 globally in QS Executive MBA Rankings 2025, #10 in Asia-Pacific.

IIM Bangalore's PGP posted a QS employability score of 80.9, well above the 48.4 global average for Masters in Management. PGPBA ranked 14th globally on employability, scoring 85.1. Does QS measure the same thing as NIRF? No. NIRF weighs teaching resources, research output, graduation outcomes, outreach and peer perception into a single Indian institute score. QS instead runs a separate ranking for each programme category against a global pool. That is why IIM Bangalore sits at #2 in NIRF Management overall, while its PGP sits at #30 within QS's global Masters in Management list.

IIM Bangalore's PGP climbed to 21st globally in the Financial Times Masters in Management Ranking 2026, published 7 September 2026, up from 28th in 2025 and the only Indian B-school in that ranking's global top 25. Its one-year EPGP separately climbed from 57th to 34th place in the Financial Times Global MBA Ranking 2026. That 23-place jump is the sharpest movement across any of IIM Bangalore's rankings this cycle. Within that ranking, EPGP placed 4th globally and 2nd in India on Career Progress. It placed 24th globally on Value for Money, and 33rd globally on Alumni Network strength. Financial Times runs a separate list for each programme format, so PGP's Masters in Management placement and EPGP's Global MBA placement are two different rankings, not one shared score, and PGPBA sits in neither.

PGP and EPGP both hold India's #1 position in their own QS category, but on different measures. QS ranks PGP on general management education and EPGP on the executive MBA format. Neither number makes the other irrelevant, so compare the two programmes on format and fee rather than on rank alone.