Calgary in the world rankings: the full record.

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research arm of The Economist, publishes a Global Liveability Index every year, scoring 173 cities on stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure. Calgary was a fixture near the top of it for ten years. In 2017 it placed 5th in the world with a score of 96.6 out of 100, earning perfect marks for stability, healthcare and education. In 2022 it tied for 3rd, behind only Vienna and Copenhagen. In 2023 it was 7th. In 2024 it tied for 5th with Geneva, and Calgary and Vancouver were the only two North American cities in the global top ten. Calgary the highest-ranked city on the continent for the second year running. Calgary Economic Development counted 2024 as the tenth consecutive year Calgary had finished in the EIU's top five.

In the June 2025 edition Calgary dropped from 5th to 18th, the largest fall of any city in that year's index. The EIU attributed it to a decline in the healthcare score, reflecting strain on Canada's health system, and noted that Calgary's other scores, stability, education and infrastructure, remained strong. Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal also lost healthcare points that year. The 2026 edition, released on July 7, 2026, kept Vancouver as the only North American city in the top ten; Calgary's 2026 placing is in the full report on the EIU's website, and this page will be updated once it has been checked against the source.

Other 2026 rankings measure different things and are current. Global Citizen Solutions, an investment-migration consultancy, named Calgary the best city in Canada to live in for 2026, ahead of Ottawa and Edmonton, citing incomes, career opportunity, quality of life and access to the Rocky Mountains. The 2026 Happy City Index, which weighs quality of life, mobility, healthcare, environment and wellbeing, placed Calgary 74th of the cities it assessed worldwide and among the highest-ranked in North America. In Numbeo's crowd-sourced Quality of Life Index for 2025, Calgary was the top-ranked Canadian city at 74th globally; in the 2026 edition Ottawa took that position and Calgary remained among the 17 Canadian cities listed.

Every one of these indexes is a composite. The EIU's is built by analysts and in-city contributors scoring more than thirty factors; Numbeo's is built from resident surveys; Global Citizen Solutions' is aimed at people considering relocation. None of them measures how any particular Calgary community feels to live in, and none should be read as a statement about property values or a prediction about where they are going. What they consistently reflect is a mid-sized, low-density city in a wealthy country with low crime, good schools, strong infrastructure and mountains an hour away, the profile the EIU has said tends to score best.

The Calgary Real Estate Board's own summary of why the city keeps appearing on these lists points to a population that has passed 1.6 million, and to Alberta having no provincial sales tax and no land transfer tax on home purchases, a closing-cost difference that is real and verifiable for anyone comparing a move from Ontario or British Columbia. For what the numbers mean for a particular street, price range or timing, that is a conversation, not a ranking.