World Happiness Index 2026: Israel remains in 8th place

Finland has been named the happiest country in the world for the ninth time in a row. Next come Iceland, Denmark and Costa Rica. The top ten also included Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Israel, Luxembourg and Switzerland. The report separately notes that Costa Rica’s rise to fourth place was the best result for a Latin American country in the history of the ranking.

The report’s authors note that in most Western industrial countries, the level of subjective well-being is now lower than in 2005-2010. The decline is particularly pronounced among young people in North America, Australia, New Zealand and Western Europe. In the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, happiness scores among people under 25 have worsened sharply in recent years.

The main theme of this year’s report is the impact of social networks on the well-being, especially of young people. The report found that heavy social media use is associated with decreased life satisfaction, with the authors calling the situation particularly alarming among teenage girls in English-speaking countries and Western Europe. At the same time, in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, as stated in the report, despite the active use of social networks, the overall well-being of young people did not decrease, although high levels of use still correlate with depression and stress.

The authors of the rating remind that the ratings are based on average data from Gallup polls for 2023-2025 and are based on people’s subjective self-assessment of their lives on a ten-point scale. In 2026, the ranking included 136 countries.