Germany is the 2nd-worst country to move to, say internationals

Another damning result for Germany: Internationals surveyed in the Expat Insider ranking have named the federal republic the second-worst country for expats to move to. What are our complaints?

The Expat Insider Survey 2026

German-based company InterNations has released the 13th edition of its annual Expat Insider Survey. This year’s survey asked nearly 8.000 respondents of 162 nationalities to rate expat life in 31 different countries according to five different scoring categories:

• Quality of Life (travel, environment and climate, leisure options, healthcare and security)
• Ease of Settling In (local friendliness, finding friends, culture and welcome)
• Working Abroad (career prospects, salaries and job security, work culture and satisfaction, work and leisure)
• Personal Finance
• Expat Essentials (digital life, admin topics, housing and language)

Among respondents, the most common nationalities were US American, British and German, and the most common countries of residence were Germany, Spain and the UAE. Respondents rated Panama, Mexico, Thailand, the UAE, and Brazil as the top five countries for internationals.

Life in Germany: Paperwork and being lonely?

In the overall ranking, with lower rankings indicating better performance and higher rankings indicating worse performance, Germany placed 30th out of 31 countries in 2025. Only Norway performed worse than Germany.

InterNations explained that Germany’s ranking was “dragged down” by its continued poor performance in the “ease of settling in” and “expat essentials” categories. Respondents said German administrative services are poor, the internet is slow, paying with cash is annoying and finding somewhere to live is difficult. 

62 percent of respondents also said that learning German was difficult and only 43 percent said that people in Germany are generally friendly. “What I don’t like about Germany is how difficult it is to blend in with the locals,” one Portuguese Berliner told InterNations, “I don’t like the bureaucracy and that people just follow the system without any human touch.” 

So is there anything that we like about Germany? There were a few sub-categories where we ranked our adopted home pretty well: travel and transit, environment and climate and work and leisure. Despite our grievances, overall, 60 percent of respondents said they were happy with life in Germany.

Germany almost always performs badly in the InterNations ranking, and certainly hasn’t been doing much to seem more welcoming to internationals. The CDU/CSU-SPD government recently announced plans to halve funding for integration courses, Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) wants to block us from filing freedom of information requests and the far-right, anti-immigration AfD continues to climb in the polls.

On the other hand, the government plans to reduce bureaucracy by automating child benefit payments by 2027 and digitising unemployment benefit procedures. It’s a mixed bag; rents in German cities are up 44 percent compared to 2016 and it's 40 degrees outside, but now it's easier to get a German passport, and… the Deutschlandticket is pretty handy?

The most attractive expat countries in the world 2026

According to InterNations, the top 10 countries around the world for expats in 2026 are as follows:

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

For more information on the survey, including a detailed breakdown of the scores, visit the InterNations website.