Best Nations for Expats to Live

If your 2026 resolution involves a new passport stamp and a one-way ticket, expats have a clear favorite—again. For the third straight year, Panama ranks No. 1 in InterNations' Expat Insider survey, which draws on nearly 7,800 responses from people living abroad to gauge everything from health care and housing to work-life balance, safety, cost of living, and social life. Instead of crime stats or tax tables, the index leans on how expats say their daily lives feel, bundled into five buckets: quality of life, working abroad, ease of settling in, personal finance, and "expat essentials" like bureaucracy and digital access. Panama leads on work and money, lands second in both settling in and expat basics, and still manages sixth place for quality of life—helping push 87% of expats there to say they're happy with life abroad, compared with 70% globally. A look at the top 10:

1. Panama
2. Mexico
3. Thailand,
4. United Arab Emirates
5. Brazil
6. Spain
7. Singapore
8. Portugal
9. Malaysia
10. Luxembourg