New 2026 Livability Ranking Reshapes Nomad Base Math

Lisbon topped the inaugural World's Most Livable Cities for Expats index, a data-driven ranking of 35 cities across six continents released by residency advisory firm Global Citizen Solutions and covered Monday by Condé Nast Traveler. The top five: Lisbon, Amsterdam, Melbourne, Vienna, and Barcelona. Tokyo placed eighth on the strength of its safety and healthcare scores.

The ranking is timed to a moment when, per a Gallup poll cited in the report's coverage, roughly 20 percent of Americans say they would prefer to leave the United States permanently. Global Citizen Solutions' Global Intelligence Unit scored each city from 0 to 100 across seven indicators — cost of living, personal safety, air quality, healthcare, ease of settling in, English proficiency, and enhanced mobility — using publicly available datasets. Notably, the index incorporates passport mobility rights as a core component, an unusual move for a livability list and a tell that this ranking is built for relocators, not tourists.

Lisbon earned 88.49 points, anchored by being one of the index's least expensive capitals, having some of its cleanest air, and posting a higher safety score than Paris, Rome, or Barcelona. Portugal also still offers a flexible digital-nomad visa renewable for up to four years. Amsterdam followed at 81.97, with the highest English-proficiency score of any European city in the index — useful for American expats who are not yet conversational in Dutch. "Affordability, social integration, and structural quality rarely co-occur within the same city," researcher Liana Simonyan said in a statement carried by Condé Nast Traveler. "The index renders these competing priorities explicit and measurable."

What this means for remote workers and nomads

A livability ranking aimed at expats — not vacationers — is more useful for nomads than the usual "best cities" listicles, because the scoring categories are the ones that matter at month three rather than week one. Our take is that the index's most useful contribution is forcing you to choose your own priorities before you choose a city. If air quality and healthcare are non-negotiable, Lisbon and Amsterdam are obvious picks. If English-proficiency and ease of settling in dominate your shortlist, Amsterdam and Melbourne pull ahead. If passport-mobility flexibility matters because you also want to bounce around the Schengen zone with minimal friction, the European cities in the top 10 cluster favorably.

The harder takeaway is what gets ignored. Cost of living was one of seven equal indicators, which means a 0-100 score buries the actual rent gap between Lisbon and Vienna. If you are extending a stay past three months, do your own rent + groceries + coworking math before the score talks you into a city that is technically "livable" but burns half your nomad budget. Lisbon's reputation, in particular, is two years stale; rents have climbed sharply.

If you are building a shortlist now, our notes on Southeast Asia as a remote-work base and Colombia for digital nomads are useful pairs to the European cities at the top of this index — different cost structures, different visa angles, same question.

Sources

• "Thinking of Moving Abroad? These Are the World's Most Livable Cities in 2026" — Condé Nast Traveler — https://www.cntraveler.com/story/thinking-of-moving-abroad-these-are-the-worlds-most-livable-cities-in-2026 — accessed 2026-06-16

• "World's Most Livable Cities for Expats: A Data-Driven Ranking of 35 Cities" — Global Citizen Solutions — https://www.globalcitizensolutions.com/briefing/worlds-most-livable-cities-for-expats/ — accessed 2026-06-16