The World’s Best Countries at Reading in 2026

A new global report has put a number on something teachers, parents, and librarians have quietly worried about for years: young people are getting worse at reading, and the drop has been dramatic. The latest PISA 2025 results, released by the OECD in September 2026, show that reading performance among 15-year-olds has fallen 28 points globally since 2015, with researchers pointing squarely at increased screen time and a decline in reading for pleasure.

Despite the overall slide, a handful of education systems are still standing out. More than 760,000 students across roughly 33 million 15-year-olds worldwide took part in the assessment, which measures how well teenagers can apply reading skills to real-world problems rather than just recall facts.

The Top Performers

Asian education systems dominate the rankings this cycle, claiming six of the top spots. Singapore leads the world, with China, Taiwan, Japan, and Macao/Korea rounding out the leading pack.

Ireland is the standout performer from Europe, ranking seventh overall and topping every other European country in the assessment. Meanwhile, the United States and Canada tied at 490 points each, sitting a healthy 29 points above the OECD average of 461, even as both countries watch reading scores trend downward year over year.

Why Reading Scores Are Falling

The OECD’s own analysis, drawn from the full PISA 2025 Results (Volume I) report, links the decline to longer hours spent on screens and a broader cultural shift away from reading purely for enjoyment. That combination appears to be eroding the kind of sustained-attention reading that builds comprehension over time, even in countries with strong overall education systems.

It’s a trend worth watching well beyond the classroom. Reading comprehension is a foundational skill that underpins performance in nearly every other subject, and a global 28-point slide over a decade suggests the shift in how young people consume information, favoring short-form and screen-based content over sustained reading, is already reshaping learning outcomes at scale.

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Source: Visual Capitalist, based on data from the OECD’s PISA 2025 Results

Education researchers note that the decline is not evenly distributed: countries that have invested heavily in structured literacy programs and limited classroom smartphone use, such as Singapore and Ireland, have held up far better than systems that expanded digital learning tools without matching investment in reading instruction. That gap is likely to widen as the next PISA cycle approaches in 2028.