King's College

King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. In 1836, King's became one of the two founding colleges of the University of London. It is one of the oldest university-level institutions in England. King's grew in the late 20th century through a series of mergers and reincorporations, including the reincorporation of its medical and dental school in 1983, mergers with Queen Elizabeth College and Chelsea College of Science and Technology in 1985 and the Institute of Psychiatry in 1997, and the merger of the United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals in 1998. Plans for a merger with Cranfield University were announced in May 2026. King's operates across five main campuses: the historic Strand Campus in central London, three other Thames-side campuses (Guy's, St Thomas' and Waterloo) nearby, and a campus in Denmark Hill in south London. It also has a presence in Shrivenham, Oxfordshire, for professional military education, and in Newquay, Cornwall, which is where King's information service center is based. The academic activities are organized into nine faculties, which are subdivided into numerous departments, centers, and research divisions. In 2024/25, King's reported total income of £1.377 billion, of which £260.5 million was from research grants and contracts. It has the fourth largest endowment of any university in the UK, and the largest of any in London. King's is the sixth-largest university in the UK by total enrolment and receives over 68,000 undergraduate applications per year. King's is a member of a range of academic organizations including the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the European University Association, and the Russell Group. King's is home to the Medical Research Council's MRC Centre for Neurodevelopmental Disorders and is a founding member of the King's Health Partners academic health sciences centre, Francis Crick Institute and MedCity. By total enrolment, it is the largest European centre for graduate and post-graduate medical teaching and biomedical research, including the world's first nursing school, the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery. King's is generally regarded as part of the "golden triangle" of universities located in and about Oxford, Cambridge and London. King's has typically enjoyed royal patronage by virtue of its foundation; King Charles III reaffirmed patronage in May 2024. Alumni and staff of King's or institutions that later merged with King's include 14 Nobel Prize laureates; heads of states, governments and intergovernmental organisations; 21 current members of the House of Commons, two Speakers of the House of Commons and 12 current members of the House of Lords; and the recipients of three Oscars.