Average IQ by Country 2026: South Korea Leads at 106.97, Rankings and Limits

On the International IQ Test's 2026 country table, South Korea has the highest average IQ at 106.97, ahead of China (106.48) and Japan (106.30). The United Kingdom is 14th at 101.57, the United States 18th at 101.04, Germany 38th at 99.32 and India 50th at 98.44. Those are averages of 1,212,714 people who chose to take one online test in 2025, a quarter of them in Indonesia, so the table measures an audience rather than the intelligence of nations. This guide gives the ranking, the South Korea figure, the sample behind each number and a check the site's own table can be put through.

In early October 2026 outlets such as ARY News reported that South Korea had taken first place in the world's IQ rankings, with an average of 106.97. The figure comes from the International IQ Test, a website that publishes an annual table of average scores by country, updated on 1 January 2026 from people who took its test during 2025. Unusually for a viral ranking, the site prints its sample counts next to every score and a methodology section beneath the table, so the claim can be checked against the site's own numbers. We read the page on 9 October 2026 and again on 23 October 2026, when it still showed the 1 January 2026 edition, and recomputed what could be recomputed. The ranking is real as a list of averages. What it is an average of is a narrower question.

What does the 2026 table say?

The table ranks 137 countries, each with at least 100 test-takers. At the top: South Korea 106.97, China 106.48, Japan 106.30, Iran 104.80, Australia 104.45, Russia 103.78, Singapore 103.56, Mongolia 102.61, New Zealand 102.35 and Viet Nam 102.26. The United Kingdom is 14th at 101.57, the United States 18th at 101.04, Germany 38th at 99.32 and India 50th at 98.44. At the bottom are Rwanda (86.90), Timor-Leste (86.70) and Somalia (83.84). Twenty-seven countries average above 100 and 110 below it. A further 77 countries and territories had fewer than 100 takers and are listed separately, unranked.

Two details change the headline. The page rolls territories into their sovereign country following UN practice, so Hong Kong (107.73, 20,793 takers), Macao (106.32) and Taiwan (105.80, 46,281) are inside China's 106.48. Counted on their own, Hong Kong would sit above South Korea. And the "previous year" column on the same page shows China first in the 2025 edition at 107.19, with South Korea at 106.43 and Japan at 106.40. South Korea's climb to first is a gain of 0.54 points for it and a loss of 0.71 for China, not a new leap in a nation.

What is the average IQ in South Korea in 2026?

The table gives South Korea an average IQ of 106.97, the highest of 137 ranked countries, from 26,996 people who took the test in 2025. That is up 0.54 points from 106.43 in the previous edition, when 23,727 took it and South Korea ranked second behind China, so the sample grew by 13.8% while the score rose. With a standard deviation of 15 the standard error of the average is 0.09 points, which means the figure is precise for the people who took the test. The open question is who they are: about 51 million people live in South Korea and the sample is well under one in a thousand of them. Searches for the average IQ of Korea, of South Korea or of Koreans all lead to the same single number, and none of them is a measurement of the country.

North Korea is not in the table. It is neither among the 137 ranked countries nor among the 77 territories with fewer than 100 takers that the page lists separately. Figures for it that circulate elsewhere are estimates, not test results; our page on average IQ by country explains where the older estimates come from.

Average IQ by country 2026: the top 20 and selected countries

The top 20 of the 137 ranked countries, each with the number of takers behind it:

• 1. South Korea: 106.97 (26,996 takers)
• 2. China: 106.48 (229,918)
• 3. Japan: 106.30 (55,994)
• 4. Iran: 104.80 (10,538)
• 5. Australia: 104.45 (4,245)
• 6. Russia: 103.78 (29,170)
• 7. Singapore: 103.56 (6,880)
• 8. Mongolia: 102.61 (2,437)
• 9. New Zealand: 102.35 (1,184)
• 10. Viet Nam: 102.26 (14,915)
• 11. Spain: 102.24 (8,064)
• 12. Cyprus: 102.12 (546)
• 13. Canada: 102.09 (7,685)
• 14. United Kingdom: 101.57 (7,310)
• 15. Sri Lanka: 101.22 (3,213)
• 16. Slovenia: 101.15 (626)
• 17. Belarus: 101.05 (7,059)
• 18. United States: 101.04 (22,605)
• 19. Albania: 101.00 (456)
• 20. Switzerland: 100.84 (3,681)

And some of the countries people search for, with rank, average and takers: Italy 22nd, 100.33 (14,588); Netherlands 23rd, 100.27 (13,066); France 27th, 100.12 (10,439); Germany 38th, 99.32 (34,350); Poland 40th, 99.14 (22,006); Israel 48th, 98.57 (8,385); India 50th, 98.44 (8,340); Norway 53rd, 98.31 (6,439); Sweden 55th, 98.22 (7,412); Denmark 59th, 97.68 (5,448); United Arab Emirates 62nd, 97.39 (2,485); Turkey 69th, 97.00 (18,915); Pakistan 70th, 96.93 (464); Egypt 72nd, 96.74 (2,942); Philippines 83rd, 95.68 (2,584); Ukraine 84th, 95.66 (91,242); Brazil 87th, 95.44 (18,668); Saudi Arabia 95th, 94.07 (3,609); Mexico 97th, 93.64 (8,043); South Africa 98th, 93.63 (9,537); Nigeria 107th, 92.76 (639); Indonesia 126th, 89.96 (299,304; it was 93.18 in the previous edition); and Somalia 137th, 83.84 (141). The United States rose 1.30 points from 99.74 and the United Kingdom 1.89 from 99.68; India fell 0.64 and Turkey 2.07. Pakistan's figure rests on 464 takers and Nigeria's on 639, so a standard error of about 0.7 points each, before any question of who they are.

Who took the test?

The 137 country rows add up to exactly 1,212,714, the sample size the page states, so the counts can be used to see who the sample is. Indonesia supplied 299,304 takers, 24.7% of everyone, with an average of 89.96. China supplied 229,918 (19.0%) and Ukraine 91,242 (7.5%, average 95.66). Those three countries are 51.2% of the sample; the top five by takers, adding Japan and Germany, are 58.6%; the top ten are 68.5%. At the other end the median country has 1,237 takers, 63 of 137 have fewer than 1,000, and 43 have fewer than 500. South Korea's 26,996 is 2.2% of the sample and, with about 51 million residents, well under one in a thousand of its people.

These are people who found an online IQ test, chose to take it and finished it. The page says as much in its own list of limitations: every participant had internet access, the test is modelled on the Raven's matrices format, a nonverbal reasoning measure, and any online test should be treated as informational rather than diagnostic. It also says participation varies with local interest in IQ tests and with how search engines surface the website in each country and language. That is a description of an audience. A random sample of a nation, the kind a national survey draws, would not depend on any of it. For how a matrix test turns raw answers into a score, see our guide to Raven's matrices scores explained.

Does the table average to the 100 it says?

The page states that the sample has a mean IQ of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. If the country rows are a complete split of that sample, the average of the country averages, weighted by each country's takers, has to equal the sample mean exactly. Recomputed from the table, it does not: the weighted average of the 137 country scores is 98.48, 1.5 points below 100. The unweighted mean of the 137 scores is 96.39. Leave Indonesia out and the weighted figure is 101.27. Last year's table, for the 125 countries that have a previous-year row (1,332,521 takers), gives 100.06 under the same calculation.

We cannot say why this year's table is 1.5 points off. The page does not state whether the 100 refers to every response before its screening for repeat attempts and bots, to a different pool of people, or to a scale that was set before the final table was cut. What it does show is how much the Indonesian crowd, at 24.7% of the sample and 89.96 on average, weighs on any global figure. The FAQ answers a related question, why most countries are below 100, by pointing to population weighting: China's large population offsets the many sub-100 countries. That argument is about population, which the page does not tabulate, so it cannot be checked here. What can be checked is that the takers, not the populations, are what produced the 100.

Do scores move when the crowd moves?

The page says averages are stable: in 84.8% of countries the score shifted by less than 2 points year over year. We counted 106 of 125, which is 84.8%, and the mean absolute change is 1.07 points. Stability within 2 points sounds reassuring until it is set against the sample counts, because the changes are not random with respect to them. Across the 125 countries, the change in a country's average has a correlation of -0.40 with the change in the logarithm of its sample size (Spearman -0.39): where the crowd grew, the average tended to fall, and where it shrank, the average tended to rise.

• 38 countries whose sample shrank by more than half gained 0.92 points on average
• 35 countries whose sample stayed within 25% either way changed by +0.14
• 18 countries whose sample grew by more than 25% lost 1.01 points
• Indonesia's sample doubled (150,041 to 299,304) and its average fell 3.22 points (93.18 to 89.96)
• Viet Nam's sample fell 69% (47,671 to 14,915) and its average rose 2.14; Romania's fell 75% and rose 2.57; Argentina's fell 68% and rose 2.72

It is not a law: Japan's sample fell 62% and its average moved only 0.10. And a correlation does not say what the cause is. It is consistent with a changing mix of people, for example a country's test traffic swinging between search visitors and social-media visitors from year to year. It sits awkwardly with the idea of a fixed national quantity measured by a steady instrument. The same caution applies to norms that age on their own; our report on why IQ norms expire covers what happens when even a carefully sampled reference group is a decade old.

Do countries with more test-takers score higher?

Yes, on this table, and by a clear margin. Across the 137 countries the correlation between a country's average and the logarithm of its number of takers is 0.60 (rank correlation 0.62). Grouped by crowd size, the 63 countries with fewer than 1,000 takers average 93.58 (the simple mean of their country averages), the 54 with 1,000 to 9,999 average 98.29, and the 20 with 10,000 or more average 100.13. Four of the top ten have fewer than 10,000 takers (Australia, Singapore, Mongolia and New Zealand), and eight of the top 20 have fewer than 5,000. These are our calculations from the published table.

The pattern does not tell us what causes it. It could reflect who has internet access and an interest in IQ tests in a given country, how a country finds the site, or the mix of people in a small crowd; the page itself says participation varies with local interest and with how search engines surface the site. It does mean a rank on this table partly reflects how many people turned up, which is the opposite of what a national comparison needs. The earlier finding, that a country's change in score moves against its change in crowd size (r = -0.40), points the same way.

How precise is a rank?

Sampling error is small for big samples and large for small ones. The standard error of an average is the standard deviation divided by the square root of the sample size, so with a standard deviation of 15 it is 0.09 points for South Korea, 0.03 for China and 0.13 for the Netherlands, but 1.3 for Malta (129 takers) and 1.26 for Somalia (141). Assuming a standard deviation of 15, a 95% interval for the smallest ranked countries is therefore about plus or minus 2.5 points, about 5 points from end to end. That is wider than the 3.3 points between 20th place (Switzerland, 100.84) and 60th (Algeria, 97.53).

The top of the table is the opposite case. South Korea and China differ by 0.49 points with a standard error on the difference of about 0.10, so the gap is not noise in the sample. That is exactly the trap: a large sample makes a gap look decisive, but it measures the people who took the test more precisely, not the country better. Ranks 21 to 31 (Georgia to Thailand) sit within 0.41 points of each other, 100.35 to 99.94, and tell you nothing about order. Our IQ bell curve shows how little of the distribution a half-point shift covers, and the IQ percentile calculator turns it into a rank: a person scoring 106.97 on a mean-100, SD-15 scale is at about the 68th percentile and one scoring 106.48 at about the 67th, so the half-point gap that decides first place is worth one percentile place.

What would a fair country comparison need?

A comparison of nations needs a sampling frame that covers the whole population, one instrument given under matched conditions, norms set on the people being compared, and a fixed date. National assessments come closer, and even they measure schooling as much as reasoning; see our reading of PISA 2025 and what it does not show about IQ. The older tables that circulate as national IQs have a different problem, a patchwork of studies and estimated values, which we set out in why country IQ rankings are weaker than the charts suggest. The International IQ Test table avoids that patchwork and substitutes another weakness, a very large but self-selected crowd. Neither is a measurement of the intelligence of a country. For the same question at state level, see what average IQ by US state rests on.

• Ask how many people stand behind a number, and how they came to take the test
• Ask whether the top countries are also the biggest contributors to the sample
• Treat any gap smaller than about 2 points between small-sample countries as noise
• Check whether the year-over-year change tracks the change in sample size
• Prefer sources that publish a sampling frame, a date and a norm group

Our IQ Metrics test reports a score and percentile against its own norm group. If you are weighing any online test, our checklist on what to check before trusting an online IQ score applies to the country tables as much as to individual results, and the page on average IQ by country explains the older figures in more detail. How far any single test can be trusted is covered in IQ test accuracy.

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