We score cities, not countries — so we averaged up. Japan leads the world at 93.7/100 across 28 scored cities. The United Arab Emirates cracks the global top six, while Italy and France rank lower than their reputations would suggest.
Kakapo scores individual cities, not whole countries. So we built the ranking the honest way — from the ground up: for every country with at least three scored cities, we averaged those cities' safety scores. Japan comes out on top, averaging 93.7/100 across 28 scored cities.
Most "safest country" lists start at the national level — one number for a whole territory. Kakapo works the other way around: we score cities, because that's where a traveller actually stands. To rank countries, we took every country with at least three scored cities and averaged those cities' overall safety scores. The result rewards countries that are safe everywhere, not just in a polished capital.
| Rank | Country | Avg city safety | Cities scored |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Japan | 93.7 | 28 |
| 2 | Finland | 92.8 | 5 |
| 3 | Switzerland | 92.7 | 13 |
| 4 | New Zealand | 92.3 | 10 |
| 5 | Denmark | 92.2 | 5 |
| 6 | United Arab Emirates | 92.0 | 5 |
| 7 | Norway | 90.0 | 4 |
| 8 | Taiwan | 90.0 | 3 |
| 9 | Slovenia | 89.3 | 3 |
| 10 | Austria | 88.8 | 4 |
| 11 | South Korea | 88.5 | 4 |
| 12 | Czechia | 88.3 | 4 |
| 13 | Saudi Arabia | 87.8 | 4 |
| 14 | Croatia | 87.7 | 7 |
| 15 | Greece | 87.3 | 15 |
| 16 | Netherlands | 86.9 | 14 |
| 17 | Poland | 86.3 | 6 |
| 18 | Belgium | 86.2 | 5 |
| 19 | Portugal | 85.7 | 13 |
| 20 | China | 85.6 | 44 |
The country most travellers underrate on this list is the United Arab Emirates, which lands sixth in the world at 92/100 — above Norway, Austria, the Netherlands and Portugal. The Gulf carries a reputation for regional instability that its cities simply don't reflect in day-to-day visitor safety: low street crime, heavy policing and modern infrastructure push Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the smaller emirates to the front. If one result on this page contradicts a traveller's gut, it's this one.
The flip side is the two countries whose reputations run ahead of their scores. Italy averages 82.6 and France 84.0 — both fine numbers, both below the top 20. Neither is dangerous in any national sense; the drag comes from their most-visited cities. Rome, Naples, Paris and Marseille carry some of the highest petty-crime and pickpocketing pressure in Europe, and because the country average is built from cities, that pressure is exactly what shows up. It's the clearest illustration of why a city-built ranking tells you something a national headline can't.
We started from Kakapo's live city scores, kept one row per city (the largest-population match), removed New York City's boroughs so they couldn't double-count, and dropped any country with fewer than three scored cities. For each remaining country we averaged its cities' overall safety scores and ranked on that average. This is deliberately a city-average, not a whole-territory measure — it describes the safety of the urban places travellers go, and it will move as our city coverage grows. Full weighting is at https://kakapo.travel/about/methodology. Scores are comparative model estimates, not official government ratings.
Free to cite in journalism, research or content — all we ask is a link back. Copy the attribution below:
Kakapo Editorial Team (2026). The Safest Countries in 2026, Measured by Their Cities. Kakapo. https://kakapo.travel/blog/safest-countries-2026
Writing a destination, ranking or travel-safety story? We give journalists custom data pulls at no cost — the full country table beyond the top 20, a specific region, or the city-by-city breakdown behind any country's average. 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].