The Hague has been named the best city in the world to live in by online database Numbeo, topping a global quality of life index where European cities swept the entire top ten. The administrative capital of the Netherlands scored 227.7 points out of 303 international cities evaluated in the latest ranking.
Dutch cities dominated the upper ranks, securing six of the top ten positions. Eindhoven took second place, followed by Rotterdam in third and Utrecht in fourth. Groningen finished in eighth place, while Amsterdam claimed ninth position.
Non-Dutch locations filled the remaining spots in the upper tier. Ghent in Belgium ranked fifth, followed by the capital of Luxembourg in sixth place and Stuttgart in Germany in seventh. Gothenburg in Sweden rounded out the top ten in tenth place, just ahead of Vienna, Austria, which took 11th spot with 205 points.
Key factors behind the Hague top ranking
Analysts attributed the first place result for The Hague to several strong performance indicators. The Dutch coastal city recorded high levels of purchasing power, safety, and healthcare, combined with low pollution rates and an average commute time to work of roughly 20 minutes.
Numbeo calculated the global index by evaluating cities across eight core criteria. Analysts assessed local purchasing power, personal safety, healthcare standards, general cost of living, housing prices relative to income levels, travel time to work, environmental pollution, and climate conditions.
Positions of Ukrainian cities and global standings
Five Ukrainian cities appeared further down the international list. Lviv placed highest among them in 218th position with 139 points. Kharkiv followed in 240th place with 126 points, while the Ukrainian capital Kyiv scored 122 points to rank 253rd. Odesa ranked 265th, and Dnipro occupied 269th position. Moscow, the capital of Russia, was placed 244th.
At the bottom of the 303-city survey were Lagos in Nigeria, Dhaka in Bangladesh, and Manila in the Philippines. The index offers a broad snapshot of global living conditions alongside other urban studies, such as previous reports detailing life in the world northernmost settlement during polar night from mid November to late January, and Point Nemo, the isolated oceanic spacecraft graveyard far from human settlement.
