The safest country in the world is currently Switzerland, followed by Iceland and Austria. There have been few changes at the top of the table for years. Iceland, in particular, which is remote and only relatively sparsely populated, has always been right at the top.

Rank	Country/Region	Index
1	Switzerland	95.3
2	Iceland	95.2
3	Austria	94.5
4	Japan	94.0
5	Finland	93.4
6	Denmark	93.1
7	Australia	92.2
8	Germany	91.6
9	Singapore	91.6
10	New Zealand	91.4
11	Ireland	91.0
12	Slovenia	90.8
13	Belgium	90.3
14	Czechia	90.3
15	Canada	89.8
16	Norway	89.7
17	Sweden	89.7
18	Netherlands	89.0
19	Lithuania	89.0
20	Estonia	88.9
21	Portugal	88.5
22	Slovakia	85.9
23	Latvia	85.8
24	Poland	85.6
25	Croatia	85.2
26	Spain	85.1
27	United Kingdom	85.0
28	South Korea	84.5
29	Hungary	84.4
30	Greece	84.1
31	Italy	84.0
32	Bulgaria	83.8
33	France	83.6
34	Cyprus	83.2
35	Uruguay	82.7
36	Romania	81.1
37	Qatar	80.8
38	United Arab Emirates	79.7
39	Montenegro	79.4
40	Kazakhstan	79.3

The criteria

For this list, 51 different criteria from various subject areas were evaluated. 23 of these come from the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), which assesses individual countries for the risk of war and acts of violence in its Global Peace Index. We have added a further 28 criteria to this 2025 index to additionally include the risk of corruption, petty crime, health and environmental impacts. Since 2024, this now also includes risks from kidnappings and the effects of arms and drug trafficking.

In the health sector, these are primarily the number of physicians and hospital beds per inhabitant, the registered cases of malaria and tuberculosis, and, as general indicators for the health system of the respective country, the DTP immunization rate and life expectancy. In order to take hygienic conditions into account, the availability of drinking water throughout the country was also included with a lower weighting.

Of direct relevance to tourists are our additional evaluations of traffic fatalities and persons affected by weather and natural events. Here, not only deaths were counted, but over the last 10 years the sum of all affected persons in relation to the total population. The events are not limited to volcanoes, tsunamis and earthquakes, but also include landslides, thunderstorms, severe floods, rain and hailstorms, heat waves and fires, sandstorms and snowstorms.

Protection from crime

If your favorite country is not listed, you don’t have to worry right away. In Switzerland and Iceland, too, you should never leave your valuables lying around in the open. Experienced travelers know that unnecessary cash and important papers should be left in the hotel room. The expensive wristwatch is best left at home. Where there are many tourists, there are crooks in all countries who want to relieve you of your valuables. It is no different in Vienna, Berlin, New York or Manila. The poorer the population of a country, the greater the desire for the wealth of foreign guests. The more crowded a place is, the more likely opportunities arise.

Emerging countries with poor score

Surprisingly, some of the actually extremely popular vacation countries, such as Mexico and Turkey, are at the very bottom of the list (only the first 40 are shown in the table). Mexico, in particular, is becoming an important and increasingly popular vacation destination for many Americans, but is ranked just 122nd in our country. The biggest point deduction here was the high crime rate in the country.