Panama has been ranked the best country in the world for people living abroad for the third consecutive year, according to the Expat Insider 2026 survey published by InterNations, and the results point to a country that has quietly built its reputation on retirees. The Munich-based expat network, which says it has more than six million members, released the findings on July 23. The 2026 edition draws on responses from 7,786 people representing 162 nationalities, collected between February 1 and March 31 of this year.
Participants rated up to 53 aspects of life abroad across five indices covering work, money, quality of life, the practical business of getting settled, and the friendliness of the welcome they received. Only destinations with at least 50 respondents were ranked, which left 31 countries in the final table, down from 46 the year before.
Panama finished first overall and took the top spot in both the Working Abroad and Personal Finance indices. It placed second for Ease of Settling In and second for what InterNations calls Expat Essentials, the category covering visas, bureaucracy, housing and digital services. Its weakest result was a sixth-place finish for Quality of Life. Eighty-seven percent of expats in Panama said they were happy with their life abroad, against a global figure of 70 percent, and roughly a third said they intended to stay permanently.
The financial numbers are the ones most likely to draw attention from anyone weighing a move. Ninety percent of respondents in Panama said their disposable household income was enough to live comfortably, and more than three-quarters said they were satisfied with their overall financial situation. Sixty-nine percent rated the general cost of living positively, far above the 39 percent global average. Panama uses the U.S. dollar alongside the balboa, which is pegged one to one, removing the exchange-rate arithmetic that shapes budgeting elsewhere in the region.
Retirees make up an unusually large share of Panama’s foreign population. Thirty-seven percent of Panama respondents were already retired, compared with 14 percent globally, and 18 percent named retirement abroad as their main reason for relocating, against a global figure of 4 percent. Those still working reported the best work-life balance measured anywhere in the survey.
Getting established appears to be the easy part. Nine in ten respondents praised the general friendliness of Panamanians, a figure exceeded only in Thailand. Panama placed first worldwide for finding housing, with 90 percent calling it easy and not a single respondent disagreeing, and second for obtaining a visa, which 82 percent described as straightforward. Every expat surveyed rated the natural environment positively.
The report is not uniformly flattering. Panama finished last of 31 countries for road and car infrastructure, 28th for the availability of environmentally friendly goods and services, and 26th for its urban environment. InterNations noted that those complaints did not appear to change many minds about staying.
Mexico placed second overall and led the Ease of Settling In index, with 73 percent of expats there saying local friendships came easily. Thailand rounded out the top three and produced the happiest expats measured anywhere, at 86 percent. The rest of the top ten ran UAE, Brazil, Spain, Singapore, Portugal, Malaysia and Luxembourg. At the other end, Norway finished last of 31, with fewer than half of expats there content with life abroad, followed by Germany in 30th, Türkiye in 29th, the United Kingdom in 28th and Canada in 27th.
Costa Rica Costa Rica does not appear anywhere in the 2026 ranking. InterNations includes a destination only when at least 50 of its survey respondents live there, and the 2026 field contracted to 31 countries from 46 the previous year. Costa Rica was among the countries that fell out.
The absence is not a poor result — it is the absence of a result, and it says more about who answered the survey than about conditions on the ground. Our country has ranked well in earlier editions of the same study, finishing first worldwide for Ease of Settling In in the 2024 report on the strength of its local friendliness scores, and placing third overall in 2021, when the field ran to 59 destinations.
For retirees weighing Central American options, the survey is worth reading for what it measures and what it does not. InterNations collects self-reported satisfaction from its own members, not cost data, healthcare outcomes or crime statistics. A first-place finish reflects how a particular group of foreign residents feels about where they live. It is a useful signal, and it is not the same thing as a cost-of-living index or a safety assessment.
