Zurich ranked 13th for intensity of innovation clusters globally

(CONNECT) Zurich is Switzerland’s sole representative in the top 100 innovation clusters around the world. The Global Innovation Index 2026, produced by the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), ranks the Greater Zurich Area in 40th place overall. This assessment quantifies the innovative activities that take place in cities and regions around the world, which includes identifying the absolute numbers of international patent applications, scientific publications and venture capital deals.

For Zurich, the ranking takes account of the 4,031 patent applications, 23,704 scientific publications and 1,491 venture capital deals recorded over the past five years. The highest number of patent applications came from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH, 180), followed by SIKA (139) and IBM (134). ETH was again responsible for the most scientific publications (5,881), with the University of Zurich (4,107) and the ETH Domain (1,104) following in second and third place respectively.

In total, 59 percent of all patent applications were submitted in partnership with innovators located outside of the Zurich cluster. In the main, these hailed from Basel, San Jose-San Francisco and Bern. Overall, 84 percent of the articles published in the Zurich innovation cluster were the result of collaborations with organizations outside the cluster, with a primary emphasis in this regard on the cities of Bern, London and Paris.

With a population exceeding 30 million people, the Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou region claimed top spot in the rankings for innovation clusters by size. It is followed by Tokyo-Yokohama, San Jose-San Francisco, Seoul and Beijing. London (8th) and Paris (10th) are the highest-ranked European innovation clusters by this metric.

In another ranking, WIPO lists the clusters with the most intensive level of innovation activities. Here, the number of inventions and scientific publications is compared against the population of the city or region being evaluated. With its population of 2.03 million people (as of 2025), the Greater Zurich Area claims 13th place. As such, it ranks behind its European counterparts in the form of Helsinki (8th), Eindhoven (9th), Stockholm (11th) and Copenhagen (12th), but in front of Munich, London and Paris. As was the case last year, the top two places went to San Jose-San Francisco and Cambridge, followed by Ningde in China, Boston-Cambridge (USA) and Oxford. ce/mm