Top 10 Cancer Hospitals in the USA
A Guide to the Nation’s Leading Centers for Cancer Care
Based on the 2026–2027 U.S. News & World Report Rankings
Introduction
Cancer remains one of the most formidable public-health challenges in the United States. More than two million new diagnoses are expected in a typical year, and hundreds of thousands of Americans still die from the disease annually. Survival has improved over three decades, and much of that gain is concentrated at high-volume, research-intensive hospitals where multidisciplinary teams, clinical trials, and advanced technologies are routine.
Choosing where to receive care is one of the most consequential decisions a patient and family will make. Rankings cannot replace a personal medical consultation, but they offer a useful starting map. The most widely cited national list is the U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals for Cancer ranking. For 2026–2027, U.S. News evaluated thousands of hospitals using patient outcomes (including 30-day survival), discharge-to-home rates, case volume, nurse staffing, advanced technologies and patient services, National Cancer Institute (NCI) designation, expert opinion from board-certified oncologists, and measures of transparency and patient experience.
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston again finished first—its twelfth consecutive year at No. 1. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York held second for the twelfth straight year. Scores then tighten through a cluster of historic academic centers. A tie at tenth place brings the list to eleven institutions. This report profiles those hospitals and notes what rankings cannot do: no single center is best for every cancer, every stage, or every person. Insurance, travel, language access, and disease subtype often matter as much as a national score.
At a Glance: 2026–2027 National Rankings
1. MD Anderson Cancer Center — Houston, TX — 99.3 / 100
2. Memorial Sloan Kettering — New York, NY — 88.7 / 100
3. Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center — Boston, MA — 84.8 / 100
4. Mayo Clinic — Rochester, MN — 82.6 / 100
5. Massachusetts General Hospital — Boston, MA — 81.0 / 100
6. Johns Hopkins Hospital — Baltimore, MD — 79.9 / 100
7. Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania — Philadelphia, PA — 79.5 / 100
8. Northwestern Memorial Hospital — Chicago, IL — 79.3 / 100
9. Stanford Hospital — Palo Alto, CA — 78.6 / 100
10 (tie). Mount Sinai Hospital — New York, NY — 77.8 / 100
10 (tie). UCSF Medical Center — San Francisco, CA — 77.8 / 100
The Top Hospitals
1. The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center — Houston, Texas
MD Anderson is a purpose-built cancer hospital and one of the original three NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers created after the National Cancer Act of 1971. U.S. News scored it 99.3 out of 100. In a recent fiscal year it treated nearly 200,000 patients and enrolled more than 10,000 people in over 1,500 clinical trials—widely described as the world’s largest cancer trials program. Strengths span leukemia and lymphoma, thoracic and head-and-neck cancers, proton therapy, and cell therapy. Researchers there have contributed to multiple FDA-approved CAR T-cell products, and more than 70 percent of cancer drugs approved in a recent year had been tested at the center. For patients, the practical advantage is depth: rare subtypes, second opinions, and early-phase studies that may not exist elsewhere.
2. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center — New York, New York
Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) is the other dedicated cancer hospital in the top two and the leading cancer center in the Northeast. Its score was 88.7. MSK has finished first or second nationally for decades and, for a fourth consecutive year, also ranked No. 1 in the country for urology—an important signal for prostate, bladder, and kidney cancers. Care is organized around disease-specific teams. In 2025 the FDA approved ten drugs based on trials in which MSK investigators played a pivotal role. Immunotherapy, precision genomics, and robotic surgery are core strengths, and regional outpatient sites across New York and New Jersey extend access beyond Manhattan.
3. Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center — Boston, Massachusetts
Dana-Farber Brigham is the adult partnership of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. It scored 84.8 and held third place. Dana-Farber is also nationally prominent in pediatric oncology through Boston Children’s Hospital, giving families a continuum from childhood through adult survivorship. The program sits inside Boston’s dense research ecosystem, with investigator-initiated trials, molecular tumor boards, and rapid adoption of targeted and immune therapies. Breast oncology, blood cancers, and thoracic malignancies are among its most visible clinical lines.
4. Mayo Clinic — Rochester, Minnesota
Mayo Clinic in Rochester scored 82.6 and retained fourth place. Unlike MD Anderson or MSK, Mayo is a multi-specialty destination center; cancer care is delivered inside an integrated system known for coordinated appointments and a team model in which specialists convene around the patient. That structure helps people with complex or multi-organ disease. Mayo’s NCI comprehensive cancer center supports high-volume programs in gastrointestinal and breast cancers, hematology, and proton therapy. Patient-experience scores are among the highest in the country. Rochester is smaller than Houston or New York, which some families find easier for extended stays. Mayo also has campuses in Arizona and Florida; this ranking is for Rochester.
5. Massachusetts General Hospital — Boston, Massachusetts
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), part of Mass General Brigham, ranked fifth with a score of 81.0. It is a high-volume academic hospital rather than a free-standing cancer center, which can help when cancer intersects with cardiology, neurology, or transplantation. The Mass General Cancer Center is an NCI comprehensive center with depth in thoracic oncology, brain tumors, melanoma, and early-phase drugs. Together with Dana-Farber Brigham, Greater Boston places two programs in the national top five. For patients, the local choice often turns on disease team, trial slot, and insurance network rather than a large quality gap.
6. Johns Hopkins Hospital — Baltimore, Maryland
Johns Hopkins Hospital, home of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, ranked sixth with a score of 79.9. The Kimmel center is known for pancreatic and other gastrointestinal cancers, lung and prostate cancer, and brain tumors. Baltimore makes Hopkins a natural Mid-Atlantic referral hub. Patients seeking a second opinion often find both granular molecular diagnosis and trials not available in community settings. The hospital pairs high clinical volume with a research enterprise that has shaped pathology, radiation physics, and targeted therapy for more than a century.
7. Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania scored 79.5 and ranked seventh. Care is organized through the Abramson Cancer Center, an NCI comprehensive center. Penn occupies a special place in recent oncology: foundational science and early clinical work on CAR T-cell therapy were done there, and the first FDA-approved CAR T product emerged from that lineage. That legacy still shapes leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma care, while breast, lung, gastrointestinal, and gynecologic programs and a large transplant service round out the enterprise. Philadelphia also hosts other strong centers, so the region is rich in options.
8. Northwestern Memorial Hospital — Chicago, Illinois
Northwestern Memorial Hospital, clinical home of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, jumped to eighth place with a score of 79.3—one of the sharper rises on the 2026–2027 list. The Lurie center is an NCI comprehensive cancer center with busy programs in breast cancer, blood cancers, gastrointestinal tumors, and precision oncology. A downtown flagship plus suburban sites gives Northwestern both destination and regional access. For Midwest patients who want academic-level care without flying to the coasts or to Rochester, it is now firmly in the national conversation.
9. Stanford Health Care–Stanford Hospital — Palo Alto, California
Stanford Hospital scored 78.6 and held ninth. The Stanford Cancer Institute is an NCI comprehensive center embedded in a university known for engineering, genomics, and biotechnology. That setting shows up in liquid-biopsy research, computational oncology, immunotherapy combinations, and new radiation and surgical tools. Clinically the hospital is strong across solid tumors and blood cancers and draws patients from the Bay Area, the West, and abroad. Patients often come for molecularly complex disease, investigator-led trials, and second opinions after treatment elsewhere.
10 (tie). Mount Sinai Hospital — New York, New York
Mount Sinai Hospital tied for tenth with a score of 77.8. Its program is anchored by the Tisch Cancer Institute, an NCI-designated center. Mount Sinai brings the scale of a large New York system: multiple hospitals, a diverse catchment area, and depth in liver cancer and transplantation, blood cancers, and head and neck oncology. With MSK already at No. 2, the city’s second top-ten option matters for insurance networks, language access, and specific disease teams.
10 (tie). UCSF Health–UCSF Medical Center — San Francisco, California
UCSF Medical Center also scored 77.8. The Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center is an NCI comprehensive center with a long record in prostate cancer, brain tumors, breast cancer, HIV-related malignancies, and research on cancer disparities. Together with Stanford, the Bay Area places two institutions in the national top ten. For families, the choice usually turns on the specific tumor board, trial slot, and which campus is easier to reach—not on a meaningful gap in the U.S. News score.
How These Rankings Should—and Should Not—Be Used
A few cautions belong next to any top-ten list. U.S. News ranks adult cancer care in the aggregate; a hospital superb for breast cancer may not lead in sarcoma or brain tumors. Procedure-level ratings for colon, lung, prostate, and gynecologic cancer surgery and for leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma are often more useful than the overall specialty rank. NCI comprehensive-cancer-center designation—held by every institution here—is an independent quality signal, and many excellent NCI centers sit just outside the top ten, including City of Hope, Cleveland Clinic, NYU Langone, and UCLA. Logistics also decide outcomes: a plan a patient can finish beats a theoretically superior protocol abandoned midway. Most top centers will coordinate with a local oncologist so that only key surgeries, transplants, or trial visits require travel.
Conclusion
The 2026–2027 list confirms a stable elite. MD Anderson and Memorial Sloan Kettering remain the two free-standing cancer hospitals against which everyone else is measured. Boston places two programs in the top five. Mayo Clinic shows that an integrated multi-specialty model can compete with dedicated institutes. Johns Hopkins, Penn, Northwestern, Stanford, Mount Sinai, and UCSF sit within a few points of one another.
What the ranking describes is capacity: high case volume, mature teams, nurse staffing, technology, trial portfolios, and the regard of other oncologists. Those ingredients correlate with better risk-adjusted survival. They do not guarantee it for any individual, and they are not the only places where excellent care is delivered. Anyone facing a new diagnosis—or a recurrence that is not responding—should treat this list as a short set of places to seek a second opinion. Ask whether the center has a dedicated team for the exact diagnosis and stage, how many similar patients it treats each year, which trials are open, whether molecular testing will guide therapy, and how care will be coordinated at home.
Cancer care in the United States is uneven, expensive, and often logistically brutal. At its best it is also astonishingly sophisticated. The hospitals in this report represent that best: institutions that treat cancer as a central mission, generate the evidence other hospitals later adopt, and give patients access to tomorrow’s treatments while delivering today’s standard of care at a very high level. Used with judgment, the top ten is a useful compass. The destination remains personal.
Source: U.S. News & World Report, 2026–2027 Best Hospitals for Cancer (released August 4, 2026). Rankings are one input among many and are not medical advice.