Uppsala University was established in 1477, when a papal bull issued by Sixtus IV granted the new foundation the privileges already held by Bologna. No older seat of learning survives in Sweden or anywhere else in the Nordic region, and its teaching was originally divided among the four classical faculties of theology, law, medicine and philosophy. Activity lapsed for much of the sixteenth century after the Reformation, and the institution was formally revived following the Uppsala Synod of 1593. It grew again during Sweden's period as a great power, when an endowment from Gustavus Adolphus placed its finances on a durable footing.

The university is now organised into nine faculties grouped under three disciplinary domains: Humanities and Social Sciences, Medicine and Pharmacy, and Science and Technology. Figures reported for 2023 record 53,658 registered students, equivalent to 28,333 full-time places, together with roughly 2,466 doctoral candidates. Faculties are subdivided into departments and led by deans, while the institution as a whole is headed by a rector magnificus working alongside a governing consistory and an academic senate. Teaching is offered in Swedish and English, and the university belongs to the Coimbra Group and the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities.

Uppsala holds a long place in the history of the natural sciences. Olof Rudbeck the Elder is credited with the discovery of the lymphatic system and laid out the first botanical garden here; the following century brought the astronomer Anders Celsius, whose name is carried by the temperature scale, and Carl Linnaeus, whose method of classification reshaped botany and zoology. Later figures include the chemist Torbern Bergman and, in the nineteenth century, Anders Jonas Ångström in physics; eight Nobel laureates are associated with the university. Its premises are dispersed across the city, from Gustavianum and the Carolina Rediviva library in the cathedral quarter to the laboratories south of the centre, with a further campus on Gotland in Visby. Uppsala is Sweden's fourth-largest city, about 71 kilometres north of Stockholm.