ISLAMABAD (The Thursday Times) — Pakistan has climbed four places to 95th out of 139 economies in the Global Innovation Index 2026 and regained its status as an innovation “overperformer”, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said in its annual report published on Thursday.
The ranking is up from 99th in 2025. WIPO gives “overperformer” status to economies that perform above expectations for their level of development, and Pakistan has now earned it for the fourth time, having also held it in 2022 and 2024.
Digital economy leads
Pakistan did better on innovation outputs than inputs, ranking 72nd for outputs and 121st for inputs, both improvements on last year. WIPO said the country’s strengths were concentrated in the digital economy, particularly mobile app creation, ICT services exports, high-tech imports and software spending, supported by “relatively strong” scientific output and university quality.
“The 2026 overperformers show that economies can generate more innovation than expected for their level of development when they build on focused strengths,” the report said.
Pakistan ranked 15th of the 36 lower-middle-income economies in the index and eighth of 11 in central and southern Asia. It did not rank among the leaders in any single pillar, such as human capital and research or infrastructure, pointing to where the next gains will have to come from.
