Mapped: Happiness Levels Across Europe

Kayla Zhu
2025-04-01 01:12:00
www.visualcapitalist.com

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Which European Countries are the Happiest (and Least Happy?)

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Europe is consistently one of the happiest regions in the world, second only to Oceania.

While many Europeans benefit from strong social support systems and relatively high incomes compared to other regions, happiness levels vary significantly across the continent.

This map showcases the findings for European countries from the 2025 World Happiness Report, an annual publication that measures global contentment based on life evaluations, social support, freedom of choice, GDP per capita, and additional indicators of well-being. The data is drawn from the Gallup World Poll and various supplementary sources.

Each nation’s score in the World Happiness Report reflects an average of life evaluations over a three-year span (2022–2024 for this edition), ranking countries from highest to lowest. A more detailed explanation of the report’s methodology can be found at the end of this article.

The Most and Least Happy Countries in Europe 2025

Below, we show the happiness scores of European countries from the World Happiness Report 2025.

Global Rank	Country	Average Happiness Score (2022-2024)
1	Finland	7.7
2	Denmark	7.5
3	Iceland	7.5
4	Sweden	7.3
5	Netherlands	7.3
7	Norway	7.3
9	Luxembourg	7.1
13	Switzerland	6.9
14	Belgium	6.9
15	Ireland	6.9
16	Lithuania	6.8
17	Austria	6.8
19	Slovenia	6.8
20	Czechia	6.8
22	Germany	6.8
23	United Kingdom	6.7
26	Poland	6.7
29	Kosovo	6.7
31	Serbia	6.6
33	France	6.6
35	Romania	6.6
38	Spain	6.5
39	Estonia	6.4
40	Italy	6.4
48	Malta	6.3
50	Slovakia	6.2
51	Latvia	6.2
56	Bosnia and Herzegovina	6.1
60	Portugal	6.0
66	Russia	5.9
67	Cyprus	5.9
69	Hungary	5.9
71	Montenegro	5.9
72	Croatia	5.9
80	Moldova	5.8
81	Greece	5.8
85	Bulgaria	5.6
86	North Macedonia	5.5
89	Albania	5.4
91	Georgia	5.4
111	Ukraine	4.7

Finland continues its reign as the happiest country in the world for its eighth consecutive year. Access to nature, high levels of trust and freedom in its society, and a strong welfare system all contribute to its high ranking.

Six of the 10 happiest countries in the world are in Europe, including all five Nordic countries: Finland (#1), Denmark (#2), Iceland, (#3), Sweden (#4), and Norway (#7). The Netherlands (#5) and Luxembourg (#9) round out the list.

Nordic countries have consistently ranked among the happiest in the world due to their strong social safety nets, emphasis on work-life balance, high levels of trust and social cohesion, and low levels of income inequality.

Additionally, several European cities ranked in The Economist’s top 10 most livable cities in the world in 2024, including Vienna, Copenhagen, and Zurich which made up the top three spots.

On the other end, Ukraine continues to be the unhappiest country in Europe amid its ongoing war with Russia, which has devastated its economy through massive GDP losses and infrastructure destruction, displaced millions of citizens, and caused tens of thousands of civilian casualties.

Where does this data come from?

Source: The World Happiness Report which leverages data from the Gallup World Poll.

Methodology: The World Happiness Report derives its rankings from Gallup World Poll data, surveying approximately 1,000 people per country per year across 140+ countries. The total sample size typically exceeds 140,000 respondents annually. The rankings are based on three-year averages, from 2022 to 2024. Respondents evaluate their lives using the Cantril Ladder, a 0-to-10 scale. The rankings are based on six key factors: GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom to make life choices, generosity (measured by charitable acts), and perceptions of corruption. In addition to life evaluations, the report examines emotional well-being through positive and negative affect indicators, such as laughter, worry, and sadness. The 2025 edition also emphasizes social trust and benevolence, analyzing behaviors like sharing meals, helping strangers, and returning lost wallets to assess how caring and community engagement contribute to happiness.

Criticisms: Critics of the World Happiness Report point out that survey questions measure satisfaction with socioeconomic conditions as opposed to individual emotional happiness. As well, there are myriad cultural differences around the world that influence how people think about happiness and life satisfaction. Finally, there can be big differences in life satisfaction between groups within a country, which are averaged out even in a nationally representative group. The report does acknowledge inequality as a factor by measuring the “gap” between the most and least happy halves of each country.

Learn More on the Voronoi App

To compare country happiness rankings from a different region, check out this graphic that visualizes the happiness levels across the Americas.

The post Mapped: Happiness Levels Across Europe appeared first on Visual Capitalist.

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