Rail have also moved up at least twenty places in this year’s rankings. ITV has had the most significant fall of the year, dropping thirty-three places after being the highest new entry in 51st place in 2025. British Airways is down twenty-nine places to this year’s 79th place and the Bank of America has dropped back twenty- seven places. Consulting & technology company Accenture – a former number one in the Top 100 – has fallen twenty-two places to 77th place, its lowest-ever ranking. There are ten employers that are new or re- entries in this year’s Top 100 , the highest being for semiconductor and software company Arm which returns in 71st place. Two well-known technology companies, Meta – owner of Facebook , WhatsApp and Instagram – and TikTok are re-entries in 75th and 76th places respectively. Accounting & professional services firm RSM and the Bank of England also return to this year’s rankings. LVMH, the luxury goods company behind brands like Louis Vuitton, Dior and Moet & Chandon champagne, makes its Top 100 debut in 82nd place. And there are new entries for law firm Dentons, the Crown Prosecution Service, and pharmaceuticals company Roche. Among the graduate employers leaving the rankings in 2026 is BT which had appeared in the Top 100 in each of the previous twenty-seven years and had formerly been ranked within the top twenty. Other employers leaving the rankings this year include law firms CMS and Baker McKenzie, banking group Santander, energy company Scottish Power, Vodafone, the Wellcome charitable foundation, and two employers that were new entries in last year’s Top 100 – defence & aerospace company Lockheed Martin and knowledge consultants Alphasights. Since the original edition of The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers was published more than a quarter of a century ago, just three organisations have made it to number one in the rankings. Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) held on to the top spot for the first four years, beginning in 1999, and its success heralded a huge surge in popularity for careers in consulting. At its peak in 2001, almost one in six graduates applied for jobs in the sector. In the year before the firm changed its name from Andersen Consulting to Accenture, it astutely introduced a new graduate package that included a £28,500 starting salary (a sky-high
named over 1,500 di!erent organisations, from well-known national and international organisations to small and medium-sized regional and local employers. The responses were analysed and the one hundred organisations that were named most often make up The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers for 2026. The Civil Service – best-known for its prestigious Fast Stream programme – remains at number one for the second year running. This is the seventh time it has been named as the UK’s leading graduate employer and a total of 6.4 per cent of final year students from the ‘Class of 2026’ voted for the Civil Service. The NHS is in second place, its highest ranking for four years, and accounting & professional services firm Deloitte returns to the top three, overtaking rival firm PwC for the first time in the twenty-eight year history of the Top 100 . The firm holds the unsurpassed record of being voted number one seventeen times since 1999, but has dropped down to fourth place this year. JPMorganChase moves up for the fourth year running, this time to fifth place, the highest-ever position for an investment bank in Top 100 . The BBC slips back one place, just ahead of accounting & professional services firm EY which remain in seventh and eighth places respectively. Goldman Sachs climbs to ninth place, its highest position for eighteen years. And having risen up the rankings five years running – from 40th place in 2021 – the Lloyds Banking Group has now reached the top ten for the first time. AstraZeneca, the pharmaceuticals & vaccine company, moves up six places to 12th place, its best ranking so far, and both GSK and Amazon climb elsewhere within the top twenty. After jumping into last year’s top ten, consumer goods company L’Oréal falls back to 18th place. And in a very close result, law firm Cli!ord Chance is ranked just ahead of legal rivals Linklaters, which climbs to 20th place. Global trading company Jane Street moves up for the fourth year running to 27th place, having joined the Top 100 in 70th place in 2022. Within the new Top 100 , the year’s highest climbers are led by engineering consultants WSP, which has rebounded forty-four places to 52nd place, after dropping to 96th place in 2025. Savills, the only property company in the Top 100 , has jumped over thirty places to 58th place, its best position yet. Law firm Clyde & Co and Network
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