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What’s your favourite thing about London? Its formidable roster of tip-top restaurants? The city’s countless excellent pubs? Its vibrant theatre scene, world-leading art exhibitions, rich variety of museums, beautiful green spaces or ground-breaking nightclubs? Or do you simply love the fact that London is one city that can boast of all of the above and much, much more?
Here at Time Out we love London, too – and that’s shown by our latest ranking of the best cities on the planet right now. In our 2025 list London comes fifth overall (out of 50), ahead of the likes of Paris, Hong Kong, Sydney and Barcelona.
Time Out compiled its best cities ranking by quizzing locals around the world, getting their insights on everything from food, nightlife and culture to affordability, happiness and more. This year more than 18,500 city-dwellers took part in the ranking.
Singing London’s praises in the list is Time Out London editor Joe Mackertich, who said:
‘London is always going to be one of the best cities in the world. That’s inarguable, thanks to the capital’s brilliant cuisine, unkillable pub culture, unrivalled shopping opportunities and (best of all) the all-encompassing range of its people. Whatever you’re into, London can provide.’
Diving into the data, London received an overall ‘city score’ of 72.55 percent, with Londoners highly praising the city’s cultural offerings, restaurants, public transport and green spaces. The capital was one of six British cities to make the cut this year.
2025 is set to be another big year for the UK capital, with tonnes of new things to explore in the city. The V&A’s east London archive, the inaugural London SXSW, Sadler’s Wells’ new theatre and the Women’s Rugby World Cup are just some of the new things coming to the capital in the next 12 months.
Top place in Time Out’s 2025 ranking of the planet’s greatest cities was taken by Cape Town, while second and third went to Bangkok and New York, respectively. Placing ahead of our city in fourth was Melbourne. London was fourth in 2024’s list.
You can find Time Out’s list of the best cities in the world in 2025 in full here.
Last year’s Time Out list of the coolest neighbourhoods in the world featured London’s Leyton.
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