One of the best things about the UK is that you can drive two hours in any direction and end up surrounded by different accents, different customs, and vastly different people.
Some places are full of the best people you’ll ever meet, who’ll take you on the kind of night out you’ll be talking about for the next decade, others will glare at you for the crime of breathing the same air as them.
Plenty of towns pride themselves on being more welcoming than the rest, but only one can be correct. So – where actually is the friendliest place in the UK? Thanks to Condé Nast Traveller, we may finally have an answer. The travel mag asked its readers to vote on ‘the places on our home turf where you can expect a warm reception’, then collated all of the answers and gave each location a ‘friendliness score’ out of 100.
Without further ado, the gold goes to… Glasgow, which claimed the title with a score of 97.14 out of 100. That’s nearly perfect. And just as well – it would be a bit embarrassing for a city whose motto is ‘people make Glasgow’ to not win the ‘nicest people’ competition.
Condé Nast Traveller describes Glaswegians as having an ‘irresistible charm’, which is pretty high praise for a city whose reputation has historically been pretty rough. But those days are past, and Glasgow is now full of culture, exciting things to do, and, obviously, unbeatable people.
In second place was London, which will probably surprise some of you. Although it isn’t traditionally known for having a smiley population, the capital got 93/100 in the vote, so clearly you Londoners are doing something right. CNT cautions that as long as you ‘follow the city’s straightforward, unwritten rules, [you’ll] blend right in’, which isn’t exactly a glowing endorsement. But hey, who are we to argue with the numbers?
Edinburgh received 91.11, securing it third place, and proving once and for all that Scotland really does bring the party.
The entire list is as follows:
The UK’s friendliest cities in 2024
- Glasgow: 97.14
- London: 93
- Edinburgh: 91.11
- Oxford: 90.91
- York: 90.77
- Bath: 89.41
- Belfast: 87.5
- Manchester: 86.67
- Liverpool: 86.13
- Birmingham: 80
You can read exactly what the people at Condé Nast Traveller had to say about each city in the original article here.
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