Best Place to Live in Europe? Every Country Ranked

Where do people have the best quality of life in Europe? 42 places go head to head across 8 rounds: salary, life expectancy, happiness, diesel price, cost of living, air pollution, safety and broadband access. Every round sorts the places into 8 ore tiers, from Dirt (1 point) up to Netherite (8 points). CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 0:15 Round 1: Salary 1:10 Round 2: Life Expectancy 2:05 Round 3: Happiness 3:00 Round 4: Diesel Price 3:55 Round 5: Cost Of Living 4:50 Round 6: Air Pollution 5:45 Round 7: Safety 6:40 Round 8: Broadband Access SCORING The score shown is the average points per round, out of 8, over the rounds a place has data for. Ties are broken by average rank, then median rank. Places missing more than 2 rounds are not ranked (Channel Islands, Faroe Islands, Gibraltar, Isle of Man, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, Vatican City, Kosovo). MISSING A ROUND: Bulgaria & Russia (no salary data), Andorra & Belarus (no happiness data). Their score is the average over the 7 rounds with data. SOURCES Round 1, Salary: UNECE, gross average monthly wages, US$, 2024 (Türkiye: 2023) Round 2, Life Expectancy: World Bank, life expectancy at birth, 2024 Round 3, Happiness: World Happiness Report via Our World in Data, 2025 Round 4, Diesel Price: EU Weekly Oil Bulletin and GlobalPetrolPrices.com, 19 Oct 2026, converted at the ECB rate Round 5, Cost Of Living: World Bank (ICP), price level of household consumption, 2025 (Andorra, Faroe Islands 2021; Kosovo 2022) Round 6, Air Pollution: World Bank, PM2.5 mean annual exposure (µg/m³), 2023 Round 7, Safety: UNODC via World Bank, intentional homicides per 100,000 people, 2023. 5-yr avg for places under 1M (Luxembourg 2019–22; Andorra 2020 only). Older: Belarus 2019; Belgium, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Russia, Ukraine, UK 2021; Portugal 2022; Isle of Man 2015; Channel Islands, Gibraltar 2010 Round 8, Broadband Access: ITU via World Bank, fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 people, 2024 (Faroe Islands, Gibraltar, San Marino 2022; Bulgaria 2023) Map shapes: Natural Earth (public domain) Flag graphics: Twemoji © Twitter, Inc. and contributors, CC-BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) MUSIC Music courtesy of Mojang Studios. Komorebi by Kumi Tanioka (round intros) and Featherfall by Aaron Cherof (interlude), plus the Minecraft soundtrack tracks So Below, Rubedo, Relic, Wending, Creator, Otherside, Precipice and Pigstep for the tier reveals. Not associated with Mojang or Microsoft. #europe #qualityoflife #geography #datavisualization #maps 🗺️ Request a map: georegraphy.com (tip, then put your map idea in the message)