The five happiest cities in the world
Do you think a South African city made the list?
Can one truly measure how happy a city is? Well, according to the 2025 Happy City Index, you can certainly try.
The 2025 Happy City Index, published by the Institute for the Quality of Life, set out to identify the cities with the best quality of life, where residents are the happiest.
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Using six core categories, the comprehensive study evaluated how well cities promote the well-being of their residents.
These categories include:
- Citizens
- Governance
- Environment
- Economy
- Health
- Mobility
Measuring true happiness may be difficult, but the Institute for the Quality of Life was able to award "Gold City" status to 31 cities in the index.
"Gold City" status means a city excels across all six categories.
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From those 31 cities, five stood out with the highest scores.
Here are the five happiest cities in the world, according to the 2025 Happy City Index:
- Copenhagen, Denmark
- Zurich, Switzerland
- Singapore (City-state in Asia)
- Aarhus, Denmark
- Antwerp, Belgium
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