Damascus Remains the Least Livable City in 2025 🏚️

What We're Showing

The 10 least liveable cities in the world, according to The Economist's Global Liveability Index 2025.

Every year, The Economist ranks cities on over 30 factors across five categories to determine their overall livability.

Factors included:

• Stability: Prevalence of crime, terror, military conflict, civil unrest/conflict
• Healthcare: Availability and quality of private and public healthcare, general healthcare indicators
• Culture and environment: Humidity/temperature rating, cultural and sporting availability, social or religious restrictions
• Education: Availability and quality of private education, public education indicators
• Infrastructure: Quality of road network, public transport, international links, availability of good housing

Key Takeaways

• Damascus, the capital of Syria, remains the world's least liveable city in 2025, despite a dramatic regime change in December 2024. The overall score for Damascus is nearly ten points lower than that of the next-worst city—Tripoli, Libya
• The bottom of The Economist's liveability rankings is largely filled by cities from the Middle East and Africa.
• Kyiv remains in the bottom 10 cities by liveability scores amid Ukraine's ongoing war with Russia.