Montreal is no stranger to being featured on global city rankings. Over the past few years, the city has been recognized for its food scene, its universities and even its friendly locals. Now, it’s been included on a list that might matter even more to anyone planning a trip.
A new ranking of the world’s safest cities for travellers was released this week, and Montreal didn’t just make the cut. It came in first place, beating out the likes of Zurich, Amsterdam, and even Tokyo.
That’s a big jump from last year, when the city was all the way down in 16th.
The annual list is put together by Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection, a U.S. travel insurance company. It’s based on a survey of American travellers who have visited the cities they ranked.
How the ranking works
To build the list, the company started with 38 of the most popular cities for American travellers. It then surveyed more than 1,500 people about the ones they’d been to.
Respondents rated each city on several measures, including safety from violent crime and terrorism, transportation safety, health, and safety for women, LGBTQIA+ travellers and people of colour.
Those results were combined with safe-city data from Numbeo, The Economist and GeoSure Global, a company that rates travel safety neighbourhood by neighbourhood.
The survey was conducted in August, so it offers a snapshot of how travellers felt at the time.
Why Montreal came out on top
Montreal finished with an overall score of 82.18 out of 100, narrowly beating Zurich at 81.03.
According to the report, Montreal is “a particularly low-crime city,” and its neighbourhoods regularly score in the high 80s from GeoSure, where scores in the high 70s are already considered exceptional.
The city also did well in nearly every category. It ranked first for the safety of women, LGBTQIA+ travellers and people of colour, and second for safety from violent crime, safety from terrorism and health measures. It came third for transportation safety.
It was also the top pick among the millennials and parents who took the survey.
Montreal’s position has bounced around over the years. It ranked sixth in 2025 before falling to 16th last year, and the report suggests its “norm is probably somewhere in the top five.”
What the actual crime numbers say
Feeling safe and being statistically safe aren’t always the same thing, and the Berkshire Hathaway list is largely based on how travellers feel. There isn’t a reliable global ranking built on official crime figures, since countries count and report crime in very different ways. But Canada’s own data offers a useful reality check.
According to Statistics Canada’s latest police-reported crime figures, released in July, the Montreal area recorded a Crime Severity Index of 61.3 in 2025, down 5% from the year before. The index measures both how much crime is reported and how serious it is. Canada’s national score was 75.0.
Montreal’s crime rate was also well below the national average, at 3,641 incidents per 100,000 people, compared to 5,585 across the country.
The city held up well against other major Canadian cities, too. Vancouver posted a Crime Severity Index of 83.5, and Winnipeg came in at 113.4. Toronto was the exception, with a slightly lower score of 55.0, though its overall crime rate was higher than Montreal’s, at 3,950 incidents per 100,000 people.
So while Montreal might not be the undisputed safest city in the world, the numbers back up the idea that it’s one of the safer big cities in Canada.
The world’s safest cities for 2027
Reykjavik, last year’s top city, slipped to fifth, while Copenhagen dropped from second to 12th. Oslo made one of the biggest jumps, climbing from 17th to sixth.
Here’s the full top 15 from Berkshire Hathaway’s ranking:
- Montreal
- Zurich
- Amsterdam
- Tokyo
- Reykjavik
- Oslo
- Singapore
- Venice
- Sydney
- Honolulu
- Dublin
- Copenhagen
- Barcelona
- San Francisco
- Paris
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