Italy in three global rankings: 10th for tourism conditions, 35th for peace, 24th of 31 for expats

Three rankings, three units

The Travel & Tourism Development Index (TTDI) is a composite. The 2026 edition, published on 25 September 2026, covers 110 economies with 102 indicators grouped into 17 pillars and five dimensions. The final score is the arithmetic mean of the 17 pillar scores, according to the WEF's technical notes. The WEF's press release says the index measures "the factors and policies that enable the sustainable and resilient development of travel and tourism". The same release says it "does not measure tourism performance directly – such as arrivals, spending, or revenue".

The Global Peace Index (GPI) is also a composite. Its 20th edition, published in June 2026, ranks 163 countries on 23 indicators in three domains: Societal Safety and Security, Ongoing Domestic and International Conflict, and Militarisation. A lower score means a more peaceful country; the published table runs from Iceland at 1.161 to Russia at 3.367. The index covers far more than street crime. Because two of its three domains cover conflict and militarisation, a country's military posture and its involvement in conflicts feed its score alongside crime and domestic safety. In the report text we reviewed, the IEP makes no claim that the GPI measures safety for tourists or visitors.

Expat Insider is a survey. InterNations ran its 2026 questionnaire online from 1 February to 31 March 2026. Relocate Magazine, reporting the results on 24 July 2026, gives 7,786 respondents from 162 nationalities. A country enters the ranking only if at least 50 people living there answered, and 31 countries met that bar in 2026. Respondents rate up to 53 factors on a one-to-seven scale. These roll up into 16 subcategories and five indices (Working Abroad, Personal Finance, Quality of Life, Expat Essentials, Ease of Settling In), which are averaged with a general happiness question to give the overall rank. For the 2025 edition, InterNations said the questionnaire was promoted through its community, newsletter and social media, and that responses were not limited to its members. We found no statement that the results are weighted to represent any wider population of foreign residents.

The WEF index: 10th for the conditions tourism runs on

Italy's 10th place in the TTDI 2026 comes with a score of 4.93. The top ten, from the WEF report's Figure 7, runs Japan 5.27, United States 5.23, Spain 5.22, Australia 5.18, France 5.17, Germany 5.09, United Kingdom 5.08, China 5.00, Switzerland 4.97 and Italy 4.93. The whole top ten spans 0.34 points, and Italy sits 0.04 below Switzerland (our arithmetic).

The WEF reports that Italy dropped one place and its score rose 1.3% against the 2024 figures as recalculated for this edition. Against recalculated 2019 figures, Italy is up three places and its score is up 3.6%. Those are the WEF's own percentages. We do not recompute them from rounded scores, because two-decimal scores give a slightly different result.

Almost everyone improved. The WEF says 101 of the 110 economies raised their scores between 2024 and 2026, and that the average score rose 2.1%, "the fastest pace since 2019". Europe and Eurasia rose 1.8% on average. A 1.3% gain in that field is a slower rise than the average, which helps explain how a higher score sits alongside a lower rank.

The comparability warning matters more than the rank change. The technical notes say that data revisions and methodology changes make this edition "incompatible with the previously released version". The main report uses softer language about limiting comparability with earlier editions. Either way, the 2024 edition as originally published, in which Italy was 9th of 119, cannot be set against 10th of 110 in 2026. Only the WEF's recalculated back-series is comparable.

In the WEF's economy profile for Italy, as read on 31 October and not re-opened for this snapshot, Italy sits high on cultural resources (4th) and low on price competitiveness (102nd).

The Global Peace Index: 35th, and what "from 33rd to 35th" hides

In the GPI 2026, Italy is 35th of 163 with a score of 1.712. In the report's regional table for Western and Central Europe (Table 1.8), it is 23rd in its region. The regional average score is 1.632, so Italy sits 0.080 points less peaceful than the average Western and Central European country (our arithmetic). Western and Central Europe is the most peaceful of the GPI's eight regions.

Italy's neighbours in the 2026 table are close together. Spain is 27th at 1.654, Germany 28th at 1.657, Italy 35th at 1.712 and the United Kingdom 39th at 1.730. Four places separate Italy from the UK on a gap of 0.018 points. Eight places separate Italy from Spain on a gap of 0.058 (both our arithmetic). Further out, Portugal is 7th at 1.427, Greece 53rd at 1.828, France 99th at 2.083 and the United States 134th at 2.535. Iceland is first.

The year-on-year story is where the press and the source part company. The 2025 edition of the GPI ranked Italy 33rd of 163, and Italian coverage of the 2026 edition reported a fall "from 33rd to 35th". That is literally true of the two editions as published. The 2026 report tells a different story. Its ranking marks Italy's position as unchanged, and Table 1.8 gives Italy's score change as 0.001.

The same mismatch appears for every neighbour we checked. Spain was 25th in the 2025 edition and is 27th in 2026, yet the 2026 poster shows it up four places. Germany went from 20th to 28th and is shown down five. The United Kingdom went from 30th to 39th and is shown down seven. The 2026 changes cannot have been measured against the 2025 edition as published. This indicates that IEP recalculated the 2025 figures when it produced the 2026 edition, and that on the recalculated basis Italy was already 35th. We did not find a recalculation statement in the report, and we did not open the data files that would show the revised 2025 scores.

What we can say firmly is narrower. Italy was 35th in the 2026 edition and 33rd in the 2025 edition as published. The published 2025 and 2026 scores (1.662 and 1.712) are on different bases, so we do not compute a change between them, and we do not publish a year-on-year score change for Italy.

The timing also matters. The IEP says most of its indicators end in December 2025. The 2026 GPI is therefore mostly a picture of 2025, and the IEP notes that the 2026 Iran war is only partly captured. Our article on the Iran war and Gulf visitors to Italy covers what that conflict has done to travel flows.

We did not review the GPI's weighting scheme, published in its Appendix A, for this article. We did not find Italy's three domain scores in the report text, so we cannot say which domain places Italy below Spain or Germany.

Expat Insider: 24th of 31 in a shrinking field

Italy is 24th of 31 in Expat Insider 2026, according to Relocate Magazine, which published positions 1 to 10 and 22 to 31. From 22nd down the list runs Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Czechia, Sweden, Canada, the United Kingdom, Türkiye, Germany and Norway, which is last. Panama is first, followed by Mexico, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates and Brazil. Spain is 6th overall and Portugal 8th.

The field has shrunk fast. Expat Insider ranked 53 countries in 2023 and 2024, 46 in 2025 and 31 in 2026. A country drops out when fewer than 50 respondents living there answer. Italy was 37th of 46 in 2025, according to Relocate, and 47th of 53 in both 2023 and 2024, according to InterNations' Italy pages for those years. With 15 fewer countries than in 2025 and different respondents, the move from 37th to 24th cannot be read as an improvement.

The subcategory results are more informative than the overall rank. Idealista, reporting on 12 August 2026, says Italy ranked 29th of 31 on the Expat Essentials index and last on Admin Topics. It was 30th for ease of getting a visa. Of respondents in Italy, 63% rated dealing with bureaucracy negatively, against 39% globally, and 32% said bureaucracy worried them before moving, against 14% globally. On Digital Life Italy was 29th, with 44% positive about online administrative services against 61% globally. On Language it was 23rd, and 58% said speaking Italian was necessary to get by, against 34% globally.

The direction has held in each edition we checked. InterNations' 2024 Italy page put Italy last of 53 on Admin Topics, with 73% finding bureaucracy difficult against 42% globally, while ranking it 17th for culinary variety and 16th for climate. The 2024 and 2026 percentages come from different samples and differently worded questions, so they should not be compared as a trend. What repeats is Italy's position: high on daily life, at or near the bottom on paperwork. Our article on foreign residents and Italians abroad covers who actually lives in Italy from abroad, using official registers instead of a survey.

Expat Insider is a measure of satisfaction among the people who answered. Its respondents are whoever completed an online questionnaire, and the ranking makes no attempt to count expats. InterNations' 2026 pages could not be opened, so every 2026 figure here comes from press coverage. Italy's respondent count was not found.

Why the three ranks only look contradictory

Set Italy's European comparators side by side and the indexes plainly move independently. Spain is 3rd on the WEF index, 27th on the GPI and 6th in Expat Insider. Germany is 6th, 28th and 30th. Switzerland is 9th, 3rd and 22nd. France is 5th on the WEF index and 99th on the GPI, and is not among the Expat Insider positions Relocate published.

France shows how far apart the units are. It is one of the five best-equipped tourism economies in the WEF's measure and outside the top 90 in the GPI, which weighs militarisation and involvement in conflict alongside domestic safety. The United States is 2nd on the WEF index and 134th on the GPI. Neither result says anything about how a visitor's week in Paris or New York will go.

Italy's own spread is narrower, at 10th, 35th and 24th of 31. The three positions are consistent with a country that has strong tourism assets, a mid-table peacefulness score inside the most peaceful region in the world, and an administrative system that people who move there consistently rate poorly. They do not contradict each other because they do not measure the same thing.

One normalisation helps a reader see the positions on one scale, as long as it is labelled. Italy's rank as a share of each field is 9% on the WEF index (10 of 110), 21% on the GPI (35 of 163) and 77% in Expat Insider (24 of 31). These are our derived figures. They show where Italy sits in each list, and they still cannot be averaged or compared as scores.

Small gaps and big headlines in composite indexes

This series keeps arriving at the same limit. A composite index produces a rank, and a rank invites a headline, but the scores behind neighbouring ranks are often too close to mean anything. None of the three publishers attaches a margin of error to a country's position, so no rank change here can be tested for significance.

The GPI makes the point sharply. Italy and the UK are four places apart on 0.018 points, on a scale where the full field runs from 1.161 to 3.367. The WEF top ten fits inside 0.34 points. In Expat Insider, the 2026 positions rest on as few as 50 respondents per country, and the coverage we read gives no confidence intervals.

Edition changes make it harder still. The WEF has recalculated its back-series and calls the new edition incompatible with the old one. The GPI's 2026 rank changes only make sense against recalculated 2025 figures. Expat Insider ranked 22 fewer countries in 2026 than in 2024. Any sentence that says Italy "rose" or "fell" in one of these indexes needs to say which editions it compares and on what basis.

Claims tested: where the coverage goes beyond the source

Most of the coverage we checked reported the ranks correctly. The problems sit in what outlets added to them.

Siviaggia's report on the GPI 2026, published on 9 June 2026, said Italy had dropped from 33rd to 35th and added that for travellers Italy "resta comunque una garanzia di serenità", a guarantee of serenity. The rank change is correct between the two editions as published, but the 2026 report's own comparison marks Italy unchanged, so the fall is contested. The serenity line is the outlet's own gloss. The IEP makes no claim about tourist safety in the report text we reviewed. Forbes Italia, on 12 June 2026, described the same result as "sostanziale stabilità", which is closer to what the report shows.

On Expat Insider, Idealista's 12 August 2026 article correctly gives Italy's 29th of 31 as its Expat Essentials rank. Quoted without that context, the figure is easy to mistake for the overall rank, which is 24th. Siviaggia's own Expat Insider list, published on 28 July 2026, leaves Italy out entirely and places Switzerland 26th and France 24th, which conflicts with the positions Relocate published. We do not use Siviaggia's list. Euronews' 27 July 2026 article on the survey does not mention Italy at all, so it cannot be cited for an Italian rank.

What is safe to cite

For each index, one figure holds up on its own and one needs care.

From the WEF, cite "10th of 110 economies in the Travel & Tourism Development Index 2026, score 4.93". Describe it as a measure of tourism-enabling conditions and policies. If you mention change, use the WEF's own wording: down one place and up 1.3% against recalculated 2024 figures. Do not compare it with the 9th of 119 in the 2024 edition as originally published.

From the IEP, cite "35th of 163 countries in the Global Peace Index 2026, score 1.712". Describe it as a peacefulness index that includes conflict and militarisation. Do not describe it as a tourist-safety ranking. If you mention the 2025 position, call it "33rd in the 2025 edition" and avoid presenting the gap as a two-place fall, because the 2026 report itself marks Italy unchanged.

From InterNations, cite "24th of 31 countries in Expat Insider 2026, a survey of about 7,800 people living abroad". Name the country count every time. Do not compare it with 37th of 46 or 47th of 53. The bureaucracy finding is consistent in direction: Italy has been at or near the bottom on Admin Topics in each edition we checked. Cite the 2026 percentages (63% negative against 39% globally) with their year, and do not set them against earlier editions' percentages.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers should not read any of these ranks as a safety rating. The GPI's 35th blends domestic safety with militarisation and conflict domains, and it says nothing about pickpocketing in Rome or a ferry strike in Naples. For safety, use your government's official travel advice for Italy, which is updated far more often than any annual index. The risks that most often change a trip in Italy are local and seasonal: our article on heatwaves and red alerts covers summer heat, and our Campi Flegrei article covers the seismic activity near Naples. Cultural resources, Italy's highest-placed area in the WEF profile, are the reason most people come, and the Rome travel guide is the place to start.

Tourism businesses and investors can use the WEF index for what it is: a peer comparison of conditions. Italy's profile sits high on cultural resources and low on price competitiveness, so anyone pricing Italian product against Spain or Portugal should look at that pillar first. Our comparison of Italy, Spain, France, Greece and Portugal sets out the visitor volumes that the index leaves out. The Expat Insider bureaucracy findings matter for anyone relocating staff or setting up a business in Italy, and Italy has sat at or near the bottom on administration in each edition we checked. Businesses that quote the GPI to customers should quote it with its unit and its country count. A rank change in any of the three is not a signal to act on unless the publisher confirms the editions compare.

Journalists and analysts can safely cite Italy's 10th of 110 in the WEF TTDI 2026, 35th of 163 in the GPI 2026, and 24th of 31 in Expat Insider 2026, each with its unit and country count. They should not repeat the GPI as a guarantee of tourist safety, Expat Essentials' 29th of 31 as Italy's overall expat rank, a 13-place expat "rise", or Siviaggia's Expat Insider list. A fall "from 33rd to 35th" in the GPI should carry the caveat that the 2026 report marks Italy unchanged and measures its changes against recalculated 2025 figures. The series finding this article adds is that composite indexes produce ranks whose neighbours are separated by tiny score gaps, with no published margin of error, so no change of a few places in any of them can be tested for significance. When a new edition of any of the three appears, we will update this page in place.