UPF-BSM, the Fastest-Growing Business School in Spain in the Financial Times Executive Education Ranking

The school once again appears in the Financial Times Executive Education Custom Ranking 2026, climbing 17 positions compared to 2025 and ranking as the leading Spanish business school, the third-fastest rising institution in Europe, and the seventh worldwide in terms of progression.

UPF Barcelona School of Management (UPF-BSM) has once again been included, for the fourth consecutive year, in the Financial Times Executive Education Custom Ranking 2026, a classification that evaluates customized executive education programmes delivered by business schools. The institution ranks as the leading Spanish business school, the third-fastest rising European school, and the seventh worldwide in terms of year-on-year progression. UPF-BSM has climbed 17 positions, reaching 59th place among the world’s top 100 institutions included in the ranking. Furthermore, it is the only Catalan and Spanish business school linked to a public university present in the ranking, and the third in the world operating within a truly public framework.

“In just four years of being present in the ranking, we have gone from not existing in it to consolidating a growth trend linked to institutional maturity, internationalization, and the evolution of our school. This result also reflects the clear consolidation of our Executive Education model: a model with real impact, built on relationships with purpose-driven companies and institutions, and supported by consistent international projection,” said José M. Martínez-Sierra, General Director of UPF-BSM.

The top 5 in this year’s (2026) Custom programmes ranking is made up of SDA Bocconi School of Management, London Business School, IMD (International Institute for Management Development), IESE Business School, and ESMT Berlin. The customized executive education ranking includes only five Spanish business schools: UPF-BSM, IESE, Esade, Deusto, and EADA, four of them based in Barcelona.

What the ranking measures

Regarding the ranking methodology, among the many variables assessed, UPF-BSM stands out in areas such as Revenue Growth (Top 15 worldwide), which measures revenue growth and the ability to generate business valued by the market in terms of pricing and recurrence; Partner Schools (Top 35 worldwide), which evaluates networking capacity, programme development, and international alliances with other institutions; and Follow up (Top 50 worldwide), which assesses the school’s ability to provide support and follow-up once participants return to their organizations.

In addition, some of the variables in which UPF-BSM has improved the most are Future Use (up more than 26 positions compared to the 2025 ranking), which measures the likelihood that companies will choose the programme again in the future; Value for Money (+29 positions), which evaluates the relationship between programme quality, design, teaching, and materials in relation to the client’s investment; and Teaching Methods (+20), which measures the quality and contemporaneity of teaching methods, combining academic rigor with practical applicability.

“This ranking validates an important idea: today, relevant business schools no longer compete only through size or tradition, but also through their capacity for innovation, methodological quality, connection with organizations, and transformative impact. And these are precisely the areas in which we have excelled,” commented Fátima Piqué, Deputy General Director of UPF-BSM and Business Development Director B2B Custom Programs.

“These strong results in such a prestigious international ranking demonstrate that public universities can and must also excel in the field of university-business collaboration. They can and should occupy positions of international reference, including in global rankings,” Martínez-Sierra also emphasized.

Click here to access the complete ranking results.