City ranking 2025: Munich takes first place

09. December 2025

Munich once again claims the top spot in the city ranking by WirtschaftsWoche, ImmoScout24 and IW Consult, reaffirming its position as Germany’s most liveable city.

Top position in the level ranking

The annual city ranking by WirtschaftsWoche, IW Consult and ImmoScout24 examines where in Germanythe conditions for living and working are best. In 2025, the analysis covered 71 major cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, and evaluated over 50 indicators, including the labour market, economic structure, quality of life, real estate market, rental prices, childcare availability, income, business landscape and tourist activity.

As it has every year since 2013, Munich secured the first place in the level ranking, which assesses the current housing, living, working and economic situation. The city performed particularly strong in the areas of economic development within the labour market and real estate sector (both ranked 1st) as well as in the economic power category (ranked 3rd).

The results show that despite its high cost of living, Munich remains an attractive location for professionals — thanks to strong job opportunities, solid income levels and a robust economic environment. As in the previous year, Stuttgart and Ingolstadt follow in second and third place.

Dynamics and infrastructure

In the dynamics ranking, which maps developments over the last five years, Munich drops one place to seventh. Nonetheless, the city continues to demonstrate steady positive momentum in both quality of life and economic dynamics, placing ahead of cities such as Hamburg and Stuttgart.

New this year is the IW Infrastructure Index, created in connection with the Special Fund for Infrastructure and Climate Neutrality (SVIK). It evaluates urban infrastructure across five dimensions: transportation, education, research, digitisation and climate protection. Munich ranks 13th in this index, achieving particularly strong results in the research (6th place) and digitalisation (7th place) categories.

München Werksviertel © Andreas Heddergott, LHM

Photo: Andreas Heddergott, LHM

Other rankings

Munich regularly performs very well in national and international comparisons, including the Bitcom Smart City Index, the PROGNOS Future Atlas and the Mercer Quality of Living Survey.

An overview of how the city performs in key rankings can be found on our rankings page.