Iceland drops two places to 26th in the 2026 Global Innovation Index

Iceland ranks 26th in the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2026, published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), down two places from last year and nine places since 2021.

Iceland ranks 21st in innovation inputs, compared with 20th last year. In innovation outputs, Iceland has fallen to 33rd place, down from 29th last year and 16th in 2021, its lowest ranking to date. The main reason for the drop is a lower score in Creative outputs.

"It is very positive to see that the conditions for innovation in Iceland are generally considered quite good. It is, however, a cause for reflection that good conditions and investment in innovation do not seem to translate sufficiently into products, companies and exports," says Borghildur Erlingsdóttir, Director General of the Icelandic Intellectual Property Office. "The WIPO Global Innovation Index gives us a good opportunity to identify where the problems lie, what we are doing well and what we can do better to bring the conditions and outputs of innovation closer to the level of the other Nordic countries. For example, it is striking that a relatively smaller share of students in Iceland graduate in science and engineering than in the countries we compare ourselves with, and the share is declining. There is clearly room for improvement there."

Iceland ranks 1st in the world for Electricity output, Low-carbon energy use, Top-level domains, and 3rd for Venture capital received and Scientific and technical articles. The weakest indicators include Domestic market scale (133rd), GDP/unit of energy use (130th), Industrial designs by origin (107th) and Graduates in science and engineering (100th).

Iceland ranks 15th among the 39 economies in Europe. Among the other Nordic countries, Sweden ranks 2nd, Finland 7th, Denmark 9th and Norway 21st.

The GII ranks 139 economies based on 79 indicators. Detailed information on Iceland's performance is available on the WIPO website.