School of Planning and Architecture

How is School of Planning and Architecture ranked in 2026?

School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi is ranked #8 in the NIRF Architecture and Planning category (2025, the latest released cycle), with a score of 65.11, and globally it sits in the #101-150 band of the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 for Architecture and Built Environment. For an aspirant gauging this institution in 2026, those two figures are the headline: SPA Delhi remains a fixed name in India's architecture top 10 and a globally recognised brand, even though its NIRF position eased from #5 in 2024 to #8 in 2025. As a government 'Institution of National Importance' founded in 1941 and devoted purely to architecture, planning and design, SPA Delhi is benchmarked against multidisciplinary IITs and NITs in NIRF, which makes its single-discipline top-10 standing notable. The sections below lay out every verified rank year by year, the trajectory behind the numbers, and how SPA Delhi stacks up against its peers.

Year-Wise Rankings

The table below consolidates SPA Delhi's verified rankings across the major bodies that assess it: the government's NIRF (Architecture and Planning), the Outlook-ICARE survey, India Today, and the QS World University Rankings by Subject. It answers the practical question an applicant asks first, namely "where exactly does this college stand and by whose count?" Read it body by body rather than expecting one universal number, because each framework measures different things, and note the year attached to every rank since SPA Delhi's position is not static. Scores are shown where the ranking body publishes them.

The key takeaway is that SPA Delhi reads very differently depending on the lens: NIRF, which folds in research and inclusivity alongside teaching, placed it #8 in 2025, whereas perception-and-discipline-focused surveys rate it far higher, with India Today putting it #2 in Architecture (2025) and Outlook-ICARE #3 among government architecture colleges (2024). For an applicant, that spread signals a school whose academic reputation in pure architecture remains elite even where its composite NIRF score has slipped.

Ranking Trajectory of School of Planning and Architecture

SPA Delhi's NIRF Architecture and Planning trajectory shows a clear dip: it held rank #5 with a score of 69.00 in 2024 and then fell to rank #8 with a score of 65.11 in 2025, a drop of three places and nearly four score points in a single cycle. Reporting on the 2025 results attributes the slide to softer research and inclusivity sub-scores rather than any weakening of the school's teaching or design reputation, which is consistent with the fact that perception-led rankings kept rating it near the top in the same window (India Today #2 in Architecture for 2025, Outlook-ICARE #3 among government colleges for 2024). The signal for a 2026 aspirant is twofold. First, SPA Delhi is no longer guaranteed a top-5 NIRF slot, so applicants comparing on NIRF alone should weigh that #8 honestly. Second, the institution remains firmly inside the national top 10 and is still treated as a flagship public architecture school, so the dip reads as a competitive re-ranking against research-heavy IITs and NITs rather than a decline in the quality of the architecture and planning education on offer. NIRF 2026 results were not released at the time of writing, so #8 (2025) stands as the most current government rank.

How School of Planning and Architecture Compares

The following table places SPA Delhi within the verified NIRF 2025 Architecture and Planning top 10 so applicants can see exactly which institutions sit above and around it and by how wide a score margin. It answers the comparison question directly: who beats SPA Delhi nationally, and how close is the contest? Read the score column alongside the rank, because the gap between SPA Delhi and the leaders is meaningful, while the gap to the schools just ahead of it is narrow. All figures are from the NIRF 2025 cycle.

The comparison shows SPA Delhi (65.11 in 2025) trailing category leader IIT Roorkee (83.95) by a wide research-driven margin, but sitting only about two points behind Jamia Millia Islamia (67.15) and IIEST Shibpur (68.37), both fellow Delhi-NCR and public peers. The practical reading for an applicant is that SPA Delhi is in a tight cluster of strong public institutions just outside the top 5, and unlike the IITs and NITs above it, SPA Delhi is a dedicated architecture and planning school rather than a general technical institute, which is why aspirants focused purely on the discipline still rank it among their first choices.