Lisbon Is the Best City for Expats. Apparently.
Every year, a new ranking appears to tell internationally mobile people where they should move next. Every year, the winners look suspiciously familiar. Every year, reality politely ignores the result
There are few things the modern relocation industry loves more than a ranking.
Best cities for digital nomads.
Best cities for remote workers.
Best cities for entrepreneurs.
Best cities for retirees.
Best cities for people who enjoy yoga while drinking specialty coffee within walking distance of a coworking space.
Somewhere, right now, a consultancy is probably preparing a report identifying the world’s most attractive destinations for left-handed freelancers with a passion for sustainable sourdough.
The latest entrant into this crowded genre comes from Global Citizen Solutions, which has crowned Lisbon as the world’s most livable city for expats, followed by Amsterdam and Melbourne. The methodology is perfectly respectable. Healthcare, safety, affordability, air quality, English proficiency, ease of settling in and mobility were all included. Data was collected. Scores were calculated. Charts were undoubtedly produced. Everybody involved can sleep well at night. The problem is not the ranking itself.
The problem is the assumption that these rankings tell us very much about living somewhere.
Because if there is one thing that internationally mobile people eventually discover, it is that moving abroad and living abroad are two very different activities.
The first lasts a few months.
The second starts when the novelty wears off.
Lisbon topping the list will surprise absolutely nobody. In fact, Lisbon has become so successful at appearing in rankings that one wonders whether it now qualifies as a permanent category rather than a city. If a report about international mobility is published and Lisbon does not appear in the top three, somebody probably launches an internal investigation.
And to be fair, there are good reasons why people like it.
The climate is pleasant. English is widely spoken. The food is excellent. The healthcare system performs reasonably well. The city remains relatively affordable compared with some northern European capitals. Residency pathways exist. The airport works. Nobody can seriously argue that Lisbon is an unpleasant place to live.
Yet there is a question that rarely appears in these reports.
Affordable for whom?
Because while Lisbon may still appear affordable from London, Amsterdam or San Francisco, many locals would understandably raise an eyebrow at that description.
Over the past decade, the Portuguese capital has become one of Europe’s most frequently cited examples of what happens when international demand collides with finite housing supply. Property prices have surged. Rents have followed. Entire neighbourhoods have been transformed by a combination of tourism, foreign investment, remote workers, retirees and international professionals.
None of these groups individually caused Lisbon’s housing challenges.
Collectively, however, they certainly helped reshape them.
This is where most expat rankings become frustratingly one-dimensional.
They tend to evaluate cities exclusively from the perspective of the arriving resident while paying remarkably little attention to the experience of the people already there.
Imagine publishing a ranking of the world’s best restaurants based entirely on customer satisfaction while never interviewing the kitchen staff. You would learn something. Just not the whole story.
Amsterdam presents a similar contradiction. It scores highly because it is safe, organised, international, English-friendly and remarkably easy to navigate without a car. All true. Yet the same city has spent years actively attempting to manage overtourism, housing pressures and population growth. The fact that a city is attractive does not necessarily mean it is enthusiastic about becoming more attractive.
That distinction matters. A great deal.
The relocation industry often treats demand as an unqualified success metric. More arrivals mean greater popularity. Greater popularity means a stronger ranking. A stronger ranking attracts more arrivals.
The logic is wonderfully circular. Reality is less cooperative.
Ask residents in Lisbon, Barcelona or Amsterdam whether endless growth automatically improves quality of life and the answers become considerably more nuanced.
What these rankings also miss is the simple fact that the best city for an expat is often not the best city for an expat.
The world’s internationally mobile population is no longer a single category.
A twenty-eight-year-old remote worker from Berlin has different priorities from a retired Canadian couple. A British entrepreneur building a company has different needs from an American family relocating with children. A digital nomad staying six months evaluates a city differently from someone planning to spend twenty years there.
Yet rankings continue searching for a universal answer to a deeply personal question.
The result is usually a list of pleasant, prosperous, globally connected cities that most people already know. Which is fine. But it is hardly revolutionary.
In fact, one could argue that these rankings reveal less about where people should move and more about how relocation has become increasingly standardised. The same handful of cities appear repeatedly because they have learned how to optimise for international mobility. They speak English. They attract investment. They create residency pathways. They market themselves effectively.
None of which necessarily tells us whether somebody will actually be happy there.
The uncomfortable truth is that relocation success is often determined by factors no ranking can easily measure.
Friendships.
Community.
Purpose.
Belonging.
The ability to build a life rather than simply consume a destination.
These things do not fit neatly into a spreadsheet.
Which is perhaps why they are so often ignored.
At Nomag, we spend a lot of time talking about mobility, relocation and life abroad. Yet the most successful moves we encounter rarely begin with somebody asking, “Which city ranks highest this year?”
Instead, they begin with a much simpler question.
“What kind of life am I actually trying to build?”
The answer might be Lisbon.
It might be Amsterdam.
It might be a village in Sicily, a small town in Spain, a secondary city in Poland or somewhere that never appears in a ranking at all.
Because despite what the relocation industry occasionally suggests, moving abroad is not a competition.
And the best city in the world is often the one nobody thought to include in the survey.