The most religiously diverse country in the world is Singapore, with a score of 9.3 out of 10 on the Pew Research Center’s Religious Diversity Index, followed by Suriname and Taiwan at 7.5 each, according to Pew’s February 2026 report using population data for 2020. South Korea and Mauritius (7.3) complete the top five. The index does not count how many separate religions exist in a country, which no census can do reliably; it measures how evenly the population is spread across seven groups: Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, followers of other religions, and people with no religion. A country split equally among all seven would score 10, and one where everyone belongs to a single group scores 0. That makes it the most defensible way to answer “which countries have the most religions”, and it also means the ranking moves when a country’s mix changes. The list has moved considerably since Pew’s first edition in 2014, partly because the world’s religious make-up changed and partly because Pew changed how it counts.
Singapore at 9.3: the 2026 top 10 set against 2010
Singapore has led every edition. Pew’s 2020 figures put Buddhists at 31% of its population, the religiously unaffiliated at 20%, Christians at 19%, Muslims at 16%, adherents of other religions, the group that now includes Taoism and Chinese folk religion, at 9% and Hindus at 5%. No group comes close to a majority, which is what the index rewards. The mix follows the city-state’s ethnic make-up: Chinese Singaporeans are mainly Buddhist, Taoist, Christian or unaffiliated, while Malays are overwhelmingly Muslim and many Indian Singaporeans are Hindu or Muslim. It has been managed since 1990 by the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act, which allows the government to issue restraining orders against religious leaders who stir up hostility between groups, and which set up a Presidential Council for Religious Harmony.
The table gives Pew’s 2020 top 10 alongside each country’s 2010 score and rank, both calculated with the same method in the 2026 report, so the two columns can be compared directly.
| Rank 2020 | Country | RDI 2020 | RDI 2010 | Rank 2010 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Singapore | 9.3 | 9.2 | 1 |
| 2 | Suriname | 7.5 | 7.6 | 3 |
| 3 | Taiwan | 7.5 | 7.5 | 4 |
| 4 | South Korea | 7.3 | 7.7 | 2 |
| 5 | Mauritius | 7.3 | 7.3 | 6 |
| 6 | Guinea-Bissau | 7.2 | 7.1 | 7 |
| 7 | Togo | 7.1 | 6.9 | 10 |
| 8 | Benin | 7.1 | 6.8 | 11 |
| 9 | Australia | 7.0 | 5.7 | 39 |
| 10 | France | 6.9 | 6.4 | 17 |
Only eight of the 201 countries and territories Pew assessed reach the “very high” band of 7.0 or more; Australia’s 7.0 sits at the top of the “high” band. At the bottom, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen score 0.0. Suriname, second, is the Western Hemisphere’s most diverse country: its 2012 census counted 48.4% Christians, 22.3% Hindus and 13.9% Muslims, a mix left by enslaved Africans and by the indentured labourers brought from British India and the Dutch East Indies after abolition in 1863. In Paramaribo the Neveh Shalom Synagogue and the Keizerstraat Mosque stand side by side. Mauritius shows a similar mix: its 2022 census recorded 47.9% Hindus, 32.3% Christians and 18.2% Muslims.
From the 2014 list to the 2026 list: why China and Vietnam dropped out
Readers who remember older versions of this ranking will notice two missing names. Pew’s 2014 report, based on 2010 data, listed 12 countries as “very high”: Singapore (9.0), Taiwan (8.2), Vietnam (7.7), Suriname (7.6), Guinea-Bissau and Togo (7.5 each), Ivory Coast and South Korea (7.4 each), China (7.3), Hong Kong and Benin (7.2 each) and Mozambique (7.0). Six were in the Asia-Pacific region, five in sub-Saharan Africa and one, Suriname, in Latin America.
The biggest change between the editions is methodological, not demographic. The 2014 index used eight groups, one of them folk religions. The 2026 index uses seven, and people who follow folk religions are now counted inside the “other religions” group. For countries where Chinese folk religion was a large separate block, that merger shrinks the number of evenly sized groups. Recalculated with the merged category and Pew’s revised estimates, which Pew says changed China’s figures considerably, China’s 2010 score falls from 7.3 to 2.7, and its 2020 score is 2.3, 126th in the world. Vietnam’s 2010 score falls from 7.7 to 6.2, and by 2020 it is 5.6, 38th. Hong Kong, 7.2 in 2014, scores 5.2 for 2020. Pew also revised the underlying population estimates, so the 2010 figures in the table above are not the same as those published in 2014. The fair way to measure change is therefore to compare the 2026 report’s 2010 and 2020 columns, which use one method.
The arithmetic behind the score is simple enough to check by hand. Pew uses a modified Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, a measure borrowed from economics, where it gauges how concentrated a market is. The share of each of the seven groups is squared, the squares are added up, the total is subtracted from 1, and the result is multiplied by 11.6 so that a perfectly even seven-way split comes out at 10. A country split exactly in half between two groups, say Christians and the unaffiliated, would therefore score 5.8, and a three-way even split would score about 7.7. A country where one group holds everyone scores 0. Singapore’s 9.3 means its six sizeable groups come close to the theoretical maximum that seven categories allow, and no other country is within 1.5 points of it.
On that like-for-like basis, the Religious Diversity Index barely moved for most of the world between 2010 and 2020. Pew found that 153 countries, 76% of the total, changed by less than 0.5 points, and 169 (84%) stayed in the same diversity band. Taiwan held steady at 7.5 and Singapore edged up from 9.2 to 9.3. The movement was concentrated in about two dozen countries, and it ran in both directions.
2010 to 2020: Australia, Canada, France and the UK climb as Christian majorities shrink
The largest rises came in historically Christian, English-speaking and Western European countries, and Pew identifies the main driver as widespread disaffiliation among Christians. When a large Christian majority shrinks and the unaffiliated grow towards it in size, the population becomes more evenly divided and the score rises.
Australia is the clearest case. Its score climbed from 5.7 to 7.0 and its rank from 39th to 9th, the only country to enter the top 10 from outside the top 30. Its 2021 census recorded 43.9% Christians and 38.9% with no religion, two blocks of similar size. Our guide to religion in Australia sets out the census trend. Canada rose from 5.7 to 6.9 (36th to 11th), with 34.6% reporting no religion in its 2021 census. The United Kingdom went from 6.1 to 6.9 (20th to 12th); in the 2021–2022 censuses Christians made up 46.5% of the UK population and people with no religion 37.8%, and Christianity lost its majority during the decade. France rose from 6.4 to 6.9 (17th to 10th), with a population Pew describes as 46% Christian, 43% unaffiliated and 9% Muslim.
The same force moved countries much further down the table. The United States rose from 4.2 to 5.8 and from 68th to 32nd, moving from “moderate” to “high” diversity as Christians fell 14 percentage points to 64%. Ireland almost doubled its score, from 1.8 to 3.7, as its Christian majority shrank by 11 points to 81%, lifting it from 130th to 86th.
Falling back since 2010: the Netherlands, South Korea, Ivory Coast and Mozambique
Push the same trend far enough, and a country starts to fall. The index rewards evenness, so once one group, including the unaffiliated, is already the largest, its further growth lowers the score. The Netherlands is Pew’s example: its unaffiliated share rose 9 points to 54% while Christians declined, and its score slipped from 7.0 to 6.8, taking it from “very high” to “high” and from 9th to 15th. South Korea fell from 7.7 to 7.3 and from second to fourth; Pew puts its 2020 population at 48% unaffiliated, 32% Christian and 19% Buddhist, with the Buddhist share down 7 points in a decade. Two African countries dropped out of the top 10: Ivory Coast, from 7.3 (5th) to 6.8 (14th), where the 2021 census counted 42.5% Muslims and 39.8% Christians, and Mozambique, from 7.1 (8th) to 6.6 (18th). Togo and Benin moved the other way, into seventh and eighth.
West Africa shows that the rises are not only about Christians leaving church. Pew estimates Benin’s 2020 population as 53% Christian, 31% Muslim, 11% followers of other religions, including traditional faiths, and 5% unaffiliated, and its score rose from 6.8 to 7.1. Guinea-Bissau, sixth, is 56% Muslim, 22% Christian, 12% unaffiliated and 11% other religions; Pew estimates that its unaffiliated share grew from 2% to 12% over the decade while followers of other religions fell by 7 points, which nudged its score from 7.1 to 7.2. At the opposite end of the scale almost nothing moved. Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen score 0.0 and Iran 0.1, because Muslims make up 99.8% or more of the population in the first three, and in 2010 the same four countries scored between 0.0 and 0.1. For the country at the top of every edition, see our facts about Singapore, and for the second-placed country, our Suriname country guide.