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Alicia Keys immortalised New York as the concrete jungle where dreams are made of – it turns out, she’s definitely onto something.
A brand-new global study has just crowned New York the world’s number one most attractive city overall, beating every other destination on the planet. However, the term ‘attractive’ here isn’t necessarily about good looks (although scenery and architecture do play a part).
The Global Tourism City Attractiveness Index 2026, from Yanolja Research in partnership with Purdue University and Seoul’s Kyung Hee University, analysed social media data in 14 languages, measuring both the volume and sentiment of traveller conversations about 200 cities. Scores are weighted across four areas: scenery, culture, experiences and hospitality.
The Big Apple is on top
New York topped the table thanks to a combination of global visibility and favourable visitor sentiment, according to researchers. It wasn’t exactly a nail-biter for second place either, with Paris cruising in behind it. Osaka and Kyoto complete a strong showing for Japan in third and fourth, with Seoul rounding out the top five, before London, Rome, Bangkok, Okinawa and Chicago fill out the rest of the top 10.
More on methodology
Deciding a city’s attractiveness actually involves quite a complex process, it seems. There are two categories involved in evaluating a city – the first is ‘awareness’, referring to how famous a city is, and the second is ‘attractiveness’, which evaluates how positive the tourist sentiment is toward a city. These two indices are given a 50 percent weighting to decide the final ranking, but split them apart, and New York’s crown wobbles. It still dominates on fame, sitting comfortably at number one for awareness. But for pure attractiveness, the thing that actually captures whether travellers leave smitten, New York drops to third, overtaken by Osaka and Kyoto, which rank first and second respectively.
Paris tells a similar story, holding onto second overall but slipping to fifth once fame is stripped out of the equation.
The rest of Japan is cashing in too. Okinawa lands eighth for attractiveness, with Tokyo, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Yokohama and Sapporo also cracking the wider top 50. That’s eight Japanese cities converting curiosity into devotion, more than any other country.
The 10 most attractive cities in the world in 2026
- New York, USA
- Paris, France
- Osaka, Japan
- Kyoto, Japan
- Seoul, South Korea
- London, UK
- Rome, Italy
- Bangkok, Thailand
- Okinawa, Japan
- Chicago, USA
See how these results compare to ‘s own ranking of the 50 best cities in the world for 2026.
Plus: This is the world’s best country for digital nomads in 2026.
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