WIPO Global Innovation Index 2026: Switzerland, Sweden, US, the Republic of Korea and Singapore top five countries again

Photo by Ivo Sousa Martins on Unsplash.

Switzerland, Sweden, the United States of America (US), the Republic of Korea and Singapore top the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s Global Innovation Index (GII) 2026 ranking, followed by the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Finland, Denmark and China.

Switzerland has now topped the GII for 16 years running.

Europe again accounts for the largest share of the top innovation economies, claiming 14 of the top 25 places. Asia takes five places: China (10th) remains the only middle-income economy among the leaders, Japan stays 12th and Hong Kong, China rises to 14th.

The United Arab Emirates enters the top 25, while Canada (16th), Australia (20th) and New Zealand (24th) regain ground. Their recoveries share a pattern: mature innovation systems strengthening their academic base, university–industry links and research investment.

According to GII 2026 estimates, global R&D expenditure grew by more than 3.3% in 2025 in real terms and it will expand by 3.6% in 2026 to $3.4 trillion. This growth in R&D spending is increasingly found in middle-income economies such as Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia and Viet Nam. Corporate R&D grew at 5.8% in real terms in 2025 to $1.5 trillion, the highest on record, driven by software and AI companies as well as defence-related R&D.

The value of venture capital (VC) funding behind new innovative startups and business ideas grew 28% to $510 billion in 2025 - the strongest annual gain since 2021. But investment is increasingly concentrated, with AI accounting for 53% of global VC deal value (and 77% in the first half of 2026) even as the number of VC deals fell for a fourth consecutive year. VC activity is nonetheless spreading geographically: African startups raised about $3.2 billion in 2025, up 40% year-on-year.

At the same time, a new generation of deep-science startups is turning frontier research into new industries. A special thematic chapter in the GII 2026 mapped more than 30,000 startups active across semiconductors, robotics, quantum computing, life sciences, space and advanced materials, with particularly strong growth in Central and Southern Asia, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa.

WIPO Director General Daren Tang says:

"AI is opening new technological frontiers across all fields in science, while government and corporate research investments reached all-time highs in 2025. Our 2026 GII report shows that a new generation of deep-science startups is translating breakthroughs into products and transforming fields such as life sciences, space, robotics and clean energy.”

Now in its 19th edition, the GII has grown from a magazine article into a powerful instrument used by countries around the world to measure innovation and shape their economic policymaking. In WIPO's 2025-2026 survey, 78% of responding Member States (93 of 120) reported using the GII to improve innovation policy and data.

Published annually, the WIPO GII ranks 139 economies on their innovation ecosystems using 79 indicators, averaged across an Innovation Input Sub-Index (Institutions, Human capital and research, Infrastructure, Market sophistication, Business sophistication) and an Innovation Output Sub-Index (Knowledge and technology outputs, Creative outputs). New to the GII 2026 is an indicator on green-field R&D and high-tech FDI, based on announced investment projects.

For each economy, a dedicated Innovation Brief is available through the interactive GII Innovation Ecosystems and Data Explorer 2026, alongside briefs on the top 100 innovation clusters, downloadable datasets and the Dealroom-WIPO Deep Science Startup Tracker.

The GII is submitted to an independent statistical audit by the Competence Centre on Composite Indicators and Scoreboards from the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC-COIN).