Tehran – Global Innovation Index (GII) ranked Tehran this year as the 63rd largest science and technology (S&T) cluster in the world, according to a report released by UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
GII reveals top innovation clusters around the world through size and strength.
Each year, we rank the top 100 innovation clusters around the world using bottom-up data-driven methodologies that ignore managers and political boundaries and identify dense geographical areas of inventors and scientists. Clusters identified in this way often span several city districts, states of army territory, and sometimes more than two countries.
In 2025, three metrics define the top 100 clusters globally. The first metric focuses on the locations of inventors listed in patent applications published under the WIPO Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).
The second metric considers authors listed in published science articles. These two metrics serve as the basis for cluster identification across previous GII editions. However, this year, GII introduced a third metric: venture capital (VC) trading locations.
The top 100 innovation clusters continue to be primarily located in three regions: North America, Europe and Asia.
Asia has four clusters, including Tel Aviv Gelsalem (19), Starbucks (58), Tehran (63), and Cairo (83).
Tehran is the only cluster in Iran that is within the top 100 innovation clusters in 2025. It submitted the 49 Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) application, published 8,269 scientific stories, and gained 1 million residents in the last five years.
Tehran’s top publishing organization is Tehran University with Tehran University College of Medical Sciences, with 7,275 articles (12% share), Islamic Azad University 5,763 articles (10% share), and 5,158 articles (9% share).
The top applicants for PCT are Mohammad Abdolahi with 16 patents (4% share), Ahmad Ghanbari with 5 patents, and Mohammad Durali with 5 patents (1%).
Approximately 4% of Tehran’s PCT patent applications have been filed in collaboration with other inventors, with Los Angeles, Glaz and Vienna emerging as the top collaboration locations. 26% of Tehran’s science articles are published in collaboration with other organizations, with the top three collaboration locations being Seoul, London and Boston-Canbridge.
In 2025, Tehran gained 357 PCT applications, 60,217 scientific publications, 85 venture capital transactions, 0.03 shares of global PCT applications, 0.73 shares of global science publications, and 0.04 shares of global venture capital transactions.
The city’s estimated cluster population, per capita PCT application, and scientific publication Capita will be $7.2 trillion, $49 million and $8.2 billion, respectively.
The per capita venture capital is approximately 11.67, with the total share of innovation intensity per capita share of 0.11.
In 2023, GII ranked Tehran as the 35th largest science and technology cluster in the world. In 2024, the city ranked 38th.
In 2025, Tehran’s ranking fell to the 63rd mostly as the introduction of VC trading was counted as a variable in this year’s methodology.
For the third year in a row, China has led the top 100 clusters (24 and 2 fewer than last year). The US is closely behind with 22 clusters (+2 compared to last year).
Germany continues to rank third in the top 100 with seven clusters (one fewer than last year), with Munich (27th), Berlin (30th) and Colon (43) taking the lead. The UK currently has four clusters in the top 100 (up from three without VCs from last year) in London (8th), Cambridge (No. 69), Oxford (No. 77) and newcomers Manchester (No. 94th), with four clusters in the top 100 (up from three without VCs from last year).
France has two clusters in the top 100 (down from 3), with Paris still in its first rank 12, followed by Lyon (90th), but Basel, a cross-border cluster previously shared with Germany, France and Switzerland, falling out of the top 100 rankings.
India still has four clusters in the top 100. Most clusters increase dramatically by including VC deals in Bengaluru (21st), Delhi (26th), Mumbai (46th), and Chennai (84th).
Japan maintains three clusters within the top 100: Tokyo-Yokohama (second), Osaka-kobe-koto (No. 11), and firstborn (No. 28) drops from 4 to 3 in the Republic of Korea.
Canada still has three clusters, with Toronto (33rd) remaining as the country’s leading innovation cluster, followed by Montreal (62nd) and Vancouver (66th). Australia currently has two clusters in the top 100, with Sydney (36th) and Melbourne (52nd) from the three in 2024.
This year, 10 clusters entered the Top 100 for the first time. Miami (67th), Phoenix (78th), Salt Lake City (92nd), China’s Nimbo (93rd), Ninde (99th), Dublin (71st), Ireland, Mexico City (79th), Mexico, Oslo (85th), Norway (91t)
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