Lisbon has topped a new global ranking of the most livable cities for expats, with European capitals taking half of the top ten spots, according to a report published in May by migration advisory firm Global Citizen Solutions.
How the index works
The report scored 35 cities worldwide across seven weighted categories: safety and healthcare (18% each), cost of living (17%), air quality (15%), ease of settling in (12%), English proficiency (10%) and a newer metric called enhanced mobility (10%). That last category draws on the Global Passport Index to measure not just how many countries a passport can enter, but how valuable those destinations actually are. Lisbon scored 88.49 out of 100, ahead of Amsterdam (81.97), Vienna (81.07), Barcelona (80.7) and Copenhagen (79.57), which rounded out Europe’s presence in the global top ten alongside Melbourne, Singapore, Auckland, Tokyo and Seoul.
Why consistency beat extremes
Lisbon’s win stands out because it doesn’t lead any single category. It isn’t the cheapest city in the index, the safest, or the strongest on English proficiency, but it posted above-average scores across all seven, which the report’s authors treat as a better predictor of where relocators actually settle long-term than any single strength. The same trade-off shows up across the rest of the European field. Vienna posted the highest healthcare score of any city in the index but the weakest score for ease of settling in among the top ten. Copenhagen, the second most expensive city in the group after Singapore, ranked among the highest for mobility. Barcelona, where foreign nationals make up 26.4% of the population, scored best among the European group for social integration. Researcher Liana Simonyan said affordability, social integration and structural quality “rarely co-occur within the same city,” and that the index is built to make that trade-off visible to people actually planning a move.
A broader shift in who counts as an expat
The report frames its findings inside a wider migration trend. The UN counted 304 million international migrants worldwide in 2024, nearly double the 154 million recorded in 1990, with a growing share relocating for lifestyle and remote work reasons rather than corporate transfers. Global Citizen Solutions notes that 79% of the digital nomads in its dataset earn more than $50,000 a year, giving them room to weigh healthcare and safety alongside price instead of defaulting to the cheapest option available. That shift is also why the index reaches past Western Europe’s usual shortlist: Tbilisi appears among the most affordable cities in the ranking, even as it trails the top tier on healthcare and mobility, a sign that Europe’s relocation map now extends into the Caucasus.
What’s next
With remote work continuing to loosen the link between where people earn and where they live, expect more of these livability rankings to widen their geography rather than compare the same handful of capitals every year. The harder test for cities like Lisbon and Barcelona will be whether they can keep their current balance of cost, safety and openness as relocation demand keeps rising, or whether the strengths that made them attractive start to price out the people they attracted in the first place.
