Switzerland slips to 9th place in the IMD World Digital and AI Ranking 2026, published on 11 November 2026 by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), the Lausanne business school. On the podium a year earlier (1st according to Inside IT, 3rd according to digitalswitzerland and swissinfo, in an edition using a different method), it is penalised by new criteria on artificial intelligence (AI): Switzerland invests little in AI and its public administration is slow to use it, according to IMD.

Who ranks above Switzerland in the IMD 2026 ranking?

The ranking covers 70 economies. The United States takes the lead, ahead of Singapore and the Netherlands, IMD states on the ranking page. Then come Denmark, Canada, Sweden, China and Finland, followed by Switzerland in 9th place. South Korea rounds off the top 10, Inside IT reports on 11 November 2026.

Switzerland's neighbours remain far behind: Germany 18th, France 21st, Austria 24th, Italy 35th. None of the four reaches 90 points, against 93.55 points for Switzerland across all 88 criteria, notes Inside IT, without specifying the scale of this score.

The table compares the positions of November 2025, in the former World Digital Competitiveness Ranking, with those of November 2026, based on the two Inside IT articles of 4 November 2025 and 11 November 2026.

CountryRank 2025 (former ranking)Rank 2026 (new ranking)
United States2nd1st
Singapore3rd2nd
Switzerland1st (3rd according to digitalswitzerland and swissinfo)9th
Germany18th18th
France21st21st
Austria24th24th
Italy40th35th

Note: Inside IT placed Switzerland 1st on 4 November 2025; digitalswitzerland and swissinfo put it 3rd in the former ranking. digitalswitzerland points out that the two editions are not directly comparable; IMD says it has rebuilt its method.

Why has the ranking's method changed?

The World Digital and AI Ranking succeeds the World Digital Competitiveness Ranking, which IMD had published for nearly ten years. On the ranking page, the institute explains that it rebuilt its work around a single question: how ready are countries and companies to use AI productively, govern it responsibly and earn the trust of the people affected.

According to the digitalswitzerland position statement of 11 November 2026, the 2026 edition measures for the first time the concrete capacity to deploy AI. The new criteria cover the use of AI in public administration and the economy, Inside IT specifies.

"The economies best placed to benefit from AI will not necessarily be those with the most ambitious national narrative or the largest number of isolated initiatives," says Arturo Bris, professor of finance and director of the IMD World Competitiveness Center, quoted by swissinfo on 11 November 2026. In his view, the winners will be those that make AI cheaper to test, safer to implement, clearer to govern and more trustworthy in the eyes of customers, regulators and workers.

Where does Switzerland fall behind?

The traditional strengths hold. According to digitalswitzerland, Switzerland remains 1st for the general regulatory framework and 3rd for talent. Inside IT adds that it stays at the top for the regulation of scientific research, intellectual property rights, knowledge transfer, attractiveness for foreign specialists and access to credit.

The weaknesses are concentrated in AI. The following ranks come from the digitalswitzerland position statement, which takes up IMD's sub-criteria:

  • AI governance: 31st, behind Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden;
  • AI capital and investment: 31st; investment incentives: 33rd;
  • the state's driving role in digital matters: 30th; central government systems: 45th;
  • AI skills: 27th, even though four in five people in Switzerland use AI;
  • public trust in AI: 32nd; AI laws adopted: 37th;
  • research infrastructure: 13th, against a 1st place for knowledge transfer.

Inside IT also flags a marked lag in the market capitalisation of the IT and media sector, as well as gaps in the implementation of the national AI strategy and in the use of AI by the authorities to improve their services. According to swissinfo, it is above all investment in the new technology that is lacking.

A survey figure completes this picture: more than 60% of executives surveyed in Switzerland cite cybersecurity as a brake on AI deployment, the second-highest value in the world after Malaysia, according to digitalswitzerland.

What Switzerland has already committed to AI

The ranking does not detail the public resources committed in Switzerland since December 2023. As our report on AI research in Switzerland details, EPFL and ETH Zurich have led the Swiss AI Initiative since December 2023, bringing together more than 800 researchers. The ETH Board has allocated it 20 million francs for 2025 to 2028.

The computing power comes from Alps, the supercomputer of the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) in Lugano, equipped with more than 10,000 Nvidia GH200 chips. It was on this machine that Apertus was trained, the fully open Swiss language model released on 2 September 2025 and updated on 24 July 2026.

Some administrations already use it. The canton of Ticino uses it for an internal translation service, and in November 2026 Valais opened to its entire administration its platform AVA, a sovereign AI that relies in particular on Apertus. At federal level, our report on AI in the federal administration lists the coordination and the projects under way. These resources exist, but digitalswitzerland concludes from IMD's ranks that Switzerland lacks the scale and the appetite for risk to turn them into applications.

digitalswitzerland's reaction

The umbrella association of the digital economy, digitalswitzerland, published its position statement the same day. "Switzerland's location factors have not yet kept pace with the speed of the AI era," says its managing director Franziska Barmettler. She adds that jobs are already being cut in Switzerland and that AI investments are going abroad. This is the association's assessment, not a figure from the ranking.

Its demands come down to five points: securing computing power and electricity and making public data usable by AI; investing more in research and development beyond Alps; a state that leads by example, with a national AI strategy under a clearly designated lead; training the population; and building trust through "smart" regulation.

Arturo Bris points to the e-ID: "We have not yet implemented the e-ID, while many other countries have done so. We are now seeing the consequences," he says in the position statement. Franziska Barmettler considers that cutting spending on the e-ID, data spaces and DigiSanté amounts to saving in the wrong place.

On skills, digitalswitzerland cites the DigitalBarometer 2026: only 53% of the population have practical AI skills. The association announces a national AI literacy campaign in April 2027, with the Confederation and the business community, to reach one million people in three languages. It also supports the legal framework on AI decided by the Federal Council, which it says is due to go out for consultation shortly.

What this changes for a Swiss SME or public administration

For a public administration, the clearest signal is the 45th rank for central government systems. digitalswitzerland also points to the absence of AI-ready public data in secure spaces that respect data protection. The Ticino and Valais examples show that a canton can move forward on its own, with an open model hosted on its premises.

For an SME, three results matter. The 31st rank for AI capital and investment means less favourable access to financing than in the leading countries, for a technology that IMD now considers systemic. The 27th rank for AI skills matches the gap between use (four in five people) and mastery (53%): training one's teams becomes a matter for management. Finally, the brake cited by more than 60% of executives, cybersecurity, is a reminder that an AI project is designed with data security from the outset.

Nothing in the ranking says that a Swiss company will do less well. IMD stresses on its page that company maturity does not follow mechanically from their country's rank: some highly ranked countries produce few AI leaders, and the reverse also exists.

What we do not know yet

  • The starting rank differs between sources: Inside IT, which reported on the IMD ranking of November 2025, placed Switzerland 1st, while digitalswitzerland and swissinfo refer to a 3rd place in the former ranking. digitalswitzerland points out that the two methods are not directly comparable.
  • The detailed profile of Switzerland, with the weighting of each sub-criterion, appears in the IMD report and country profiles, which this article was not able to consult.
  • The opening date of the consultation on the federal legal framework on AI is not specified in the digitalswitzerland position statement.

Sources