According to the World Happiness Report 2025, which was published on Thursday, Finland has been declared the happiest country in the world for the eighth consecutive year.
The study, conducted in collaboration with the Gallup polling company and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, was published by the Oxford University Well-being Research Centre, which asked people to rate their lives on a scale of 0 to 10 – zero being the worst possible life and 10 being the best possible life.
The top four are completed by Scandinavian countries, namely Denmark, Iceland and Sweden. Costa Rica and Mexico entered the top ten for the first time.
The country rankings are based on a three-year average of these scores. The top 10 are:
- Finland
- Denmark
- Iceland
- Sweden
- Netherlands
- Costa Rica
- Norway
- Israel
- Luxembourg
- Mexico
To the contrary, the United Kingdom and the United States fell down the list to 23rd and 24th place respectively. Greece was in 81st place. Afghanistan was again ranked as the unhappiest country in the world (147th place). Sierra Leone in West Africa is the second unhappiest, followed by Lebanon, which is ranked 3rd from the bottom.
According to the researchers, in addition to health and wealth, some factors that influence happiness are simple, such as sharing meals with others or having someone you can rely on, as well as household size. In Mexico and Europe, for example, a household of four to five people predicts the highest levels of happiness, the study found.
