My city is now the world’s most liveable – apart from the 171 days of rain a year

Walking along cobblestone streets in the Danish capital, you can almost hear an orchestra playing Wonderful Copenhagen – a ditty from the 1950s classic film Hans Christian Andersen about Denmark’s master of fairytales.

Out of 173 cities, Copenhagen recently unseated Vienna for top spot in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2025 Global Liveability Index.

Copenhagen’s Nyhavn port features colourful medieval houses.Credit: Getty Images

Such rankings always add fuel to the fire in the Melbourne-Sydney rivalry. This year, the Victorian capital landed fourth spot ahead of the harbour city in sixth. Meanwhile, Adelaide’s ninth place generated collective eye rolls in Perth.

Short-term smugness and bragging rights aside, having called five major Australian cities, plus Bangkok and Copenhagen home, I can attest that global league tables should be taken with a grain of salt. No city stands on a pedestal of perfection. All cities are a work in progress with charms, quirks and flaws. Data crunchers can never truly capture lived experience.

So, what’s it like living in the world’s most liveable city?

The song doesn’t lie – Copenhagen is truly wonderful. I love my life here. I pinch myself every day that I randomly met my very own Danish Prince Charming and parachuted into his cosy Scandinavian life, where his nearest and dearest not only welcomed me with open hearts but also showered me with handmade knitwear.

Copenhagen is a chic, romantic city, brimming with hygge, castles, green spaces, bike paths, efficient public transport, free healthcare and state-funded education. It is extremely family-friendly, prioritising work-life balance, gender equality, and featuring heavily subsidised childcare and generous parental leave. It is so safe that parents frequently leave sleeping babies unattended in prams outside cafes.

But even social welfare utopias have challenges, niggles and frustrations. All those aforementioned nice things funded by the state are a result of residents paying a lot of tax.

Be warned, those charming photos of crowds sitting in the sun drinking “probably the best beer in the world” (Carlsberg) outside Nyhavn’s colourful dollhouse-esque buildings are not an accurate depiction of everyday life.

The weather is mostly miserable. It rains every second day, with a whopping 171 days of precipitation a year. As I write this, it’s pouring horizontally midsummer.

During the brutal winters, the wind gets into your bones, and the darkness saps your soul. As British comedian Conrad Molden noted, there are no sunrises in December – it’s an 8.30am “greyrise” and then dark again by 4pm.

Copenhageners celebrate their drinking culture at La Banchina, 14-seat walk-in restaurant, café and wine bar with an on-site sauna.

And can a city that charges up to $11 for a cafe-bought latte be considered the world’s most liveable? The cost of living is on steroids here. There is little bang for buck at the supermarket, but it’s always soup weather, so I make the most of those overpriced, anaemic-looking vegetables.

Another factor the global rankings don’t measure is human interactions. The Danish capital can be a lonely place for newcomers. Copenhageners are typically introverted – they rarely talk to strangers or say good morning to passersby on the street. Many have had the same circle of friends for decades and don’t have room on their dance cards for new mates. I’ve met expats who have lived here for years without making a single Danish friend. But on the flipside, get some beers into Copenhageners and you’re in for a memorable night and an epic hangover. They’re “one last drink” dangerous like Dubliners ... before you know it, it’s 4am and you’re doing karaoke in a smoky pub.

Another blind spot in global rankings is the extent to which a city embraces multiculturalism and gives all residents a “fair go”. The level of casual racism here would likely make 1960s Australia blush. Many internationals grapple with job discrimination. In Copenhagen’s corridors of power, the centre-left government walks a hard line on immigration policies, despite Denmark’s ageing population, low birth rate and major skills shortages. The European Union’s top court will soon rule on the legality of Danish legislation that aims to uproot “non-white” residents from so-called ghettos in Copenhagen by literally bulldozing apartments and evicting people from public housing.

At times, small-country parochialism cuts uncomfortably close to xenophobia. On my second day after moving to Copenhagen, a supermarket shelf stacker told me: “This is Denmark, we speak Danish,” when I asked politely in English for help trying to find tahini. I stammered an assurance that I intended to take language classes before we briefly bonded over how much he adored the Australian-born Danish royal Mary. Months later, I made a point of finding my old mate and asking in Danish where the toothbrushes were.

Still, no matter how much effort one puts into mastering the funky grammar and glottal stops (potato in the throat sounds), Copenhageners will literally tell you: “You’ll never be Danish.”

But that’s fine with me. I’m a woman of the world who secretly whacks Vegemite on rye bread. Don’t tell the Vikings.

Lisa Martin is an Australian journalist living in Copenhagen.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.