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This blog was kindly authored by Viggo Stacey, International Education & Policy Writer at QS Quacquarelli Symonds.
If 2026 is anything like last year, international education is in for another unpredictable 12 months.
Much of 2025 was interspersed with speculation in the press about whether degrees were no longer of value for graduate, in a new world of work. There was also recurring discussion about higher education in key study destinations losing reputational ground to emerging education hubs. Despite this, rumours of higher education’s decline have been exaggerated.
Across the global education landscape, competition for outstanding students continues to heat up. Despite policy changes in key study destinations designed to reduce the number of international students from arriving onshore; universities and governments continue to vie for the best international talent.
India
Canada’s longstanding diplomatic rift with India began to thaw in 2025, with Mark Carney and Narendra Modi agreeing to enhance diplomatic staffing levels and to strengthen people-to-people linkages when they met late last year.
Australia is already there. The country’s education minister, Jason Clare, has visited India three times in the three and a half years he has held the education portfolio. The latest visit in December saw him invited to dine privately with his counterpart, Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, at his home in New Delhi.
India is also top of mind for UK universities, with several announcing branch campuses, and many seeking dual degrees or research partnerships with Indian counterparts. Kier Starmer’s trade mission to Mumbai in 2025 focused on business and trade, with India’s demand for 70 million university places needed by 2035 noted as a ‘huge opportunity for UK universities seeking new funding streams’.
However, official government figures from the end of last year suggested that the numbers of higher education students from India studying abroad overall fell in 2025.
Beyond India
At QS, our projections for the total number of internationally mobile students globally are expected to hit 8.5 million by the end of the decade.
QS has already spoken about the Big four evolving into the Big 14, as the predicted growth rate in global international student numbers over the next five years rises by 4 per cent.
We also anticipate that the combined market share of the US, UK, Australia and Canada will continue to drop slowly in the next years, from the current 40 per cent towards the projected 35 per cent by the end of the decade.
If the current US administration continues on its unpredictable path (student visa appointments were paused for an extended period in 2025, before expanded social media vetting for students was announced in June), the UK, Australia, Canada, along with an array of places seeking to become international study hubs, could benefit.
The US’ new partial bans on student visas from countries such as Nigeria may also prove advantageous for the UK.
Figures from IIE in late 2025 showed that overall new international student numbers in the US fell by 7 per cent to 277,118. The picture is complicated however. While the number of new graduate students fell by 15 per cent, figures for new undergraduates actually grew by 5 per cent.
Our own analysis suggested that, if OPT (Optional Practical Training) numbers are outstripped from the total US numbers, international student figures in the US could decline to such an extent that the UK would become the number one destination for international students in the world by 2030.
In December 2025, the federal government in Canada announced more details of its $1.7 billion Canada Global Impact+ Research Talent Initiative. It follows European initiatives in seeking to recruit scientists, particularly from the US, in the face of funding cuts at home. China has also launched its own visa, seeking to attract talented scientists. This visa (the K-visa) gives applicants with a bachelor’s degree in a STEM field or those engaged in STEM research or education at a recognised institution flexible entry into the country, without the need for employer sponsorship.
Policies like these are designed to win talent that would otherwise be in the US, and the UK might also benefit among students and scholars who would previously have opted for the US.
A cap on numbers?
Canada’s new cap on international students, announced in November 2025, has seen cap numbers reduced from around 300,000 last year to 155,000 in 2026, but notably, it will not include master’s students. In Australia, some two dozen providers are already over the 80 per cent threshold of their New Overseas Student Commencement allocations for 2026.
Policies such as this could also end up benefiting the UK.
This all being said, the final impact of the international student levy, as well as the likely boost from re-association with Erasmus+ could alter the overall result for the UK in varied ways.
Ahead of rejoining the Erasmus+ programme by 2027, the new Basic Compliance Assessment rules on international applications in the UK could see universities punished for high visa refusal and completion rates. This is likely to damage the diversity of international cohorts on UK campuses – some institutions have already publicly said they will not recruit from ‘high risk’ countries in the next year in order to protect the integrity of the sector.
Australia’s minister Clare repeatedly decried the ‘shonks’ taking advantage of international students during Anthony Albanese and the Labor Party’s first term in Australia. Subsequently, the government brought in changes to ensure that prospective students are genuine students, avoiding those who are supposedly seeking ‘to cheat the system in order to enter Australia’. Clare’s speeches since the re-election in 2025 have been much more supportive.
International education advocates in other countries will hope that language such as this will be tempered in 2026, as the systems that study destinations have put in place begin to see results.
This year could well be the year that international education bounces back.