Safest Countries in the World 2026, Region by Region

The safest country in the world in 2026 is Iceland, which tops the Global Peace Index (GPI) published in June 2026 by the Institute for Economics & Peace with a score of 1.161, followed by New Zealand (1.343) and Switzerland (1.363). Slovenia, Ireland, Austria, Portugal, Singapore, Finland and Japan complete the top 10. Seven of the ten are European, but every region has a leader of its own: New Zealand in the Asia-Pacific, Bhutan in South Asia, Canada in North America, Uruguay in South America, Qatar in the Middle East and Mauritius in sub-Saharan Africa. At the other end, Russia ranks last of 163 countries, behind Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

What the 2026 Global Peace Index counts, and its top 10

“Safest” has no single official definition, so this ranking uses the most widely cited proxy. The GPI scores 163 countries and territories, home to 99.7% of the world’s population, on 23 indicators. They cover safety and security in society (homicides, crime, violent demonstrations, terrorism, political instability, and refugees and displaced people), deaths and relations arising from domestic and international conflict, and militarisation, including military spending and the arms trade. Each indicator is scored from 1 to 5, and internal peace counts for 60% of the final score and external peace for 40%. A lower score means a more peaceful country.

Two caveats matter for anyone reading the GPI as a travel-safety list. Because militarisation and foreign conflicts carry weight, a country with very low street crime can still rank poorly if it spends heavily on defence or fights abroad. And most indicators use data from 2025 or earlier, so the report itself says the effects of the war involving Iran that began in late February 2026 are not fully captured. For crime alone, see the separate comparison linked at the end.

The index has its critics, and their points help explain the table. The Economist observed that weighting military expenditure may favour countries that enjoy peace because others, often the United States, pay for their defence. Others have noted that it has no indicator specifically for violence against women and children, and that the countries it ranks highest are mostly small, stable western and central European democracies. At a 2010 seminar the index’s own vice-president acknowledged that results for very small countries such as Iceland could be misleading beside those of much larger ones. Read with those limits in mind, it remains an annual ranking that covers almost every country on the same 23 measures.

Europe: Iceland’s lead and seven of the top ten

Iceland’s margin is the widest at the top of the table: its 1.161 is almost 0.2 points clear of New Zealand, while the next nine countries, from New Zealand to Japan, are separated by less than 0.15. Part of the explanation is built into the index. Iceland has no standing army; its Coast Guard runs the Iceland Air Defence System, and since 2008 other NATO members have taken turns patrolling its airspace. With almost no military spending and no conflicts, it scores close to the minimum on the militarisation indicators, and it adds low crime and political stability.

The rest of Europe’s top group is made up of small or mid-sized states, several of them militarily neutral: Switzerland (3rd), Slovenia (4th, up two places), Ireland (5th), Austria (6th), Portugal (7th) and Finland (9th), with Denmark 11th, the Czech Republic 13th, Hungary 15th and the Netherlands 17th. Europe’s larger powers rank much lower because of their armed forces and overseas commitments: Spain is 27th, Germany 28th, Norway 33rd, Italy 35th, the United Kingdom 39th, Sweden 40th and France 99th. The continent also holds two of the bottom four, Ukraine (160th) and Russia, which is grouped with Eurasia below.

Asia-Pacific: New Zealand, Singapore and Japan

New Zealand is the Asia-Pacific leader and second in the world with 1.343, helped by its distance from any conflict and low militarisation. Singapore (8th) and Japan (10th) take the region’s other two top-10 places, followed by Malaysia (12th), Australia (20th), Timor-Leste (32nd) and Mongolia (34th). Vietnam (41st) and Taiwan (42nd) sit just outside the top quarter, South Korea is 57th and Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, 69th.

The region also has a long tail. Cambodia is 96th, Thailand 101st, the Philippines 102nd and China 118th. North Korea ranks 147th and Myanmar, in conflict since the 2021 military coup, 151st.

South Asia: Bhutan in 16th place, Afghanistan near the bottom

South Asia has the widest spread of any region. Bhutan, a Himalayan kingdom of about 800,000 people, ranks 16th in the world with a score of 1.546, ahead of Australia, Belgium and Germany. Sri Lanka follows at 67th, then Nepal (111th) and Bangladesh (117th). India, the most populous country on Earth, is 127th. Pakistan is 152nd and Afghanistan 157th, both among the 14 countries the 2026 report names as least peaceful.

The Americas: Canada 14th, Uruguay 43rd, the United States 134th

Canada is the safest country in North America and 14th worldwide with 1.525. Its neighbour shows how much the militarisation and violence indicators can weigh on a wealthy country: the United States ranks 134th with 2.535. Mexico is 139th.

In Latin America the leader is Uruguay, 43rd with 1.754, followed by Chile (52nd), Costa Rica (62nd) and Paraguay (64th). Costa Rica stands out for a different reason: it abolished its army after the brief civil war of 1948, writing the change into its 1949 constitution. Argentina is 72nd, Trinidad and Tobago 79th and Panama 81st. Central America and the Caribbean sit mostly in the third quartile: Guatemala 88th, the Dominican Republic 89th, Honduras 97th, Nicaragua 106th, Cuba 109th and El Salvador 121st. The region’s largest countries rank far lower: Brazil 124th, Venezuela 133rd, Ecuador 135th and Colombia 141st, the last still affected by armed groups a decade after its 2016 peace agreement with the FARC.

Middle East and North Africa: Qatar and Kuwait ahead of a troubled region

The Gulf states lead the Middle East and North Africa. Qatar is 31st in the world with 1.676, Kuwait 49th and Oman 60th, with Morocco (65th), Jordan (68th), the United Arab Emirates (73rd) and Tunisia (77th) behind them. Algeria is 91st, Saudi Arabia 95th, Bahrain 108th, Egypt 113th and Libya 125th. The region also holds a cluster near the bottom: Lebanon (131st), Iraq (140th), Iran (144th), Palestine (148th), Syria (155th), Yemen (156th) and Israel (159th), which has been at war in Gaza since October 2023; the report notes that Israel’s overall score nonetheless improved by 2.6% this year, mainly on its militarisation indicators.

Sub-Saharan Africa: Mauritius in 18th, Botswana in 50th

Mauritius, an Indian Ocean island republic, is the most peaceful country in Africa and 18th in the world with a score of 1.586, just behind the Netherlands. Equatorial Guinea is 38th, Botswana 50th, the Gambia 56th, Madagascar 59th and Namibia 63rd, while Sierra Leone (74th), Senegal (75th) and Ghana (76th) are all inside the top half. South Africa ranks 123rd. Nigeria, the continent’s most populous country, is 142nd and Ethiopia 138th. Six of the least peaceful countries in the world are in sub-Saharan Africa: the Central African Republic (150th), Somalia (153rd), Mali (154th), South Sudan (158th), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (161st) and Sudan (162nd), where the civil war that began in April 2023 continues.

Russia and Central Asia: Uzbekistan 37th, Russia 163rd

The former Soviet states range from near the top third to the very bottom. Uzbekistan leads at 37th with 1.726, followed by Kazakhstan (44th), Tajikistan (47th), Armenia (51st), Moldova (55th), Kyrgyzstan (61st) and Turkmenistan (66th). Georgia is 94th, Azerbaijan 110th and Belarus 115th. Russia comes last of all 163 countries, with a score of 3.367, reflecting the full-scale invasion of Ukraine it launched in February 2022; Ukraine, as the country being invaded, ranks 160th. The world as a whole, the report found, became less peaceful for the 15th time in 18 years, with average country peacefulness down 0.7% on the year before. Size works against a high rank: of the seven most populous countries, which hold over half of humanity, the best placed is Indonesia at 69th, followed by China (118th), Brazil (124th), India (127th), the United States (134th), Nigeria (142nd) and Pakistan (152nd).

Read by region, the GPI is less a list of rich countries than a list of small, unarmed or neutral, conflict-free ones, which is why Iceland, Bhutan, Mauritius and Costa Rica outrank much wealthier states. Several of them manage without an army at all, a group described in our guide to countries with no military. The full peace ranking is broken down further in the most peaceful countries in the world, and if your question is street crime rather than war, start with the countries with the lowest crime rates.