University in brief

The university was founded in 1632 by King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. The university, which operated mainly under the Kingdom of Sweden in the 17th century and under the Russian Empire in the 19th century, has survived several closures and reopenings and moved a few times. In 1919, it was reopened as the Estonian-language University of Tartu. This laid the foundations for Estonian-language higher education and created a community of national intellectuals, who have a significant role in the development of the Estonian state, society and culture. Read more about the university’s history. 

The University of Tartu is the only classical comprehensive university in Estonia. Research is done at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, the Faculty of Social Sciences, the Faculty of Medicine, and the Faculty of Science and Technology. See the university’s structure. 

Around 1,600 students are international students and more than 1,100 are doctoral students. About half of our employees are academic staff, 63% of whom have a PhD. There are 220 professors at the university. For more details, see the university’s statistics dashboard. 

We are among the first 400 in two of the world’s most prestigious university rankings (in 2023, 358th in QS World University Rankings and the 301-350 band in Times Higher Education World University Rankings). Read more about the university in rankings.

The university is among 1% of the world’s most cited universities and research institutions in 15 fields of research. Over 80 of our researchers are among the 1% most cited researchers in the world (Web of Science). For more details, see our research statistics.

In the past five years, University of Tartu researchers have published an average of 3,500 publications per year, with an average of 1,300 in the Web of Science and Scopus databases. For more details, see the university’s statistics dashboard. 

In 2023, 58,722 continuing education learners took part in our 1,489 courses.

The university has 66 partner universities from 26 countries. Our strategic partners are the networks of recognised European research universities and top-level research universities in Asia and North America, the cooperation with which is based on top-level competence and mutual research contacts. Read more about the international university.
 

By the end of 2021, the University of Tartu owned 52 patents and had 37 pending patent applications. These have been submitted to protect a total of 24 inventions.

R&D services provided to companies and the public sector amounted to €12 million in 2021. Read more about business cooperation.

See the university’s budget (in estonian).