We scored 1,089 cities and averaged them by continent. Oceania edges Europe at the top — but the real finding is Asia, which holds both the single safest city on Earth and one of the least safe, a 77-point gulf that makes the whole idea of a "safe continent" fall apart.
Averaged across 1,089 cities, Oceania is the world's safest continent at 85.4/100 — but only by a whisker: Europe trails by half a point (84.9), and the top three are close enough that "safest continent" is more of a photo finish than a runaway.
We took every city in the Kakapo database with a safety score, mapped each one to its continent by country, and averaged the overall scores. No cherry-picking — capitals and villages, famous and obscure, all in. The result is the first like-for-like continental safety ranking we're aware of that's built bottom-up from individual cities rather than a handful of headline countries.
| Continent | Avg safety | Cities | Safest / least-safe city |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Oceania | 85.4 | 40 | Te Anau, New Zealand 94 Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea 50 |
| 2. Europe | 84.9 | 347 | Monte-Carlo, Monaco 95 Kyiv, Ukraine 46 |
| 3. Asia | 80.8 | 270 | Nara, Japan 97 Aleppo, Syria 20 |
| 4. North America | 78.1 | 305 | Interlaken, United States 94 Port-au-Prince, Haiti 46 |
| 5. South America | 71.9 | 63 | Puerto Natales, Chile 87 Caracas, Venezuela 42 |
| 6. Africa | 69.3 | 64 | Grand Baie, Mauritius 89 Johannesburg, South Africa 41 |
Oceania edging Europe is the kind of result that only shows up when you score cities instead of arguing about countries. New Zealand and Australia are almost uniformly high, and with relatively few large cities dragging the average down, Oceania's mean sits at 85.4. Europe — vastly larger and more varied, from Monte-Carlo (95) to a wartime Kyiv (46) — lands at 84.9. Practically, they're the same tier. The honest headline is that Oceania and Europe jointly own the top, with Asia a clear third and, notably, ahead of North America.
Asia's third-place average of 80.8 is the most misleading number on the page. The same continent contains Nara, Japan — the single safest city we score anywhere on Earth at 97/100 — and Aleppo, Syria at 20. That 77-point spread is the widest of any continent, and it's why "is Asia safe?" is an unanswerable question. Japan, Singapore and South Korea would top a global city ranking; conflict zones in the Middle East and South Asia sit at the very bottom. Averaging them produces a number that describes nowhere. Every continent has internal spread, but Asia's is in a class of its own.
Kakapo breaks every city score into four parts — personal safety, transport, healthcare and night safety. When we averaged each continent's sub-scores, the same one came last every single time: night safety. It's the weakest metric in safe Oceania and in higher-risk Africa alike. Daytime and after-dark are effectively two different cities everywhere, and the after-dark one always scores lower.
| Continent | Weakest sub-score | Avg |
|---|---|---|
| Oceania | Night safety | 82.7 |
| Europe | Night safety | 75.3 |
| Asia | Night safety | 69.3 |
| North America | Night safety | 66.0 |
| South America | Night safety | 52.6 |
| Africa | Night safety | 48.2 |
We queried the live Kakapo database for every city with a safety score (1,089 cities), took one row per city, excluded New York's boroughs to avoid double-counting, mapped each city's country to its continent, and averaged the overall scores and the four sub-scores within each group. Each Kakapo score runs 0–100 and draws on national travel advisories, local crime data, healthcare infrastructure and night-safety measures; full weighting is at https://kakapo.travel/about/methodology. Scores are comparative model estimates, not official ratings, and city coverage is denser in Europe, Asia and North America than in Oceania, Africa and South America — so the smaller continents' averages rest on fewer cities.
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Kakapo Editorial Team (2026). Which Continent Is Safest? We Scored 1,089 Cities to Find Out. Kakapo. https://kakapo.travel/blog/safest-continents-2026
Writing about world safety, regional travel or a specific continent? We give journalists custom data pulls at no cost — the full per-continent breakdown, a single region's city-by-city table, or the sub-score detail behind any number here. Email [email protected] and we usually reply the same day.
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Kakapo publishes real safety scores for every destination, drawing on national travel advisories, local crime data, healthcare infrastructure, and night-safety measures. Kakapo Studies is our research imprint — independent editorial, no advertiser influence on scores. Contact: [email protected].