Pakistan climbs four places to 95th in global innovation index

Pakistan has risen four places to 95th among 139 economies in the World Intellectual Property Organisation's Global Innovation Index 2026, according to a Dawn report published on Thursday.

The placing improves on 2025, when Pakistan was ranked 99th. The index also restored Pakistan's "overperformer" status, a label the report gives to economies judged to be performing above expectations for their level of economic development. According to Dawn, this is the fourth time Pakistan has been counted as an overperformer, having also held the status in 2022 and 2024.

The report further showed that Pakistan performed better on innovation outputs than on innovation inputs in 2026, Dawn reported.

The Global Innovation Index is compiled by the World Intellectual Property Organisation and ranks 139 economies. The reports published on Thursday did not set out Pakistan's individual scores on the component measures of the index, and the figures could not be independently verified by Skardu Times.

No statement from the federal government or from Pakistani officials dealing with intellectual property was carried in the reports.

Pakistan's position on the index has drawn attention in previous years chiefly because of the overperformer classification, which is assigned to economies whose innovation results run ahead of what their development level would suggest. Being moved back into that group, after moving up four places in the overall table, means Pakistan's ranking has recovered the ground it lost between 2024 and 2025.

The index, published annually, compares economies across a set of measures covering institutions, human capital, infrastructure, market and business sophistication, knowledge and technology outputs, and creative outputs, and combines them into a single ranking. Its full 2026 edition was issued on Thursday.

The improvement reported by Dawn is a ranking shift rather than a measure of the size of Pakistan's innovation spending or output. The report did not give a comparison of Pakistan's absolute scores with the previous year.

Pakistan's ranking of 95th places it in the upper-middle section of the 139-economy table, four positions above its 2025 standing and within the group of economies the index describes as overperformers relative to their income level.