Expats in Germany have spoken and we were mercilessly honest once again. Five German cities ranked among the 10 worst for expats in InterNation’s most recent ranking.

Hamburg named second-worst international city for expats

It never quite feels like Germany has enough time to lick its wounds before another annual InterNations ranking comes around and floors any pretence or expectation that this is an easy place to find your feet.

In the latest edition of InterNation’s ranking "The Best and Worst Cities for Expats in 2024", which is based on a survey of 12.543 international people of 175 nationalities living abroad in 174 countries, five German cities were named among the 10 worst cities for expats in 2024. The ranking assessment is split into five categories; quality of life, ease of settling in, working abroad, personal finance and expat essentials.

Frankfurt came in 45th place, Berlin in 46th, Cologne in 48th, Munich 50th and Hamburg in 52nd, second-last only to Vancouver. Just one German city named in the ranking managed to escape the bottom 10, with Düsseldorf coming in 41st place.

Meanwhile, Spain excelled. Valencia, Málaga and Alicante were named the three best cities for expats in 2024, with InterNations adding a disclaimer that the ranking was based on a survey carried out in February 2024, before floods hit Valencia and the surrounding area, killing almost 230 people.

The remainder of the top spots were occupied by a mixed bag of cities, with Panama City, Mexico City and Bangkok all featuring in the top 10. One of the biggest winners in 2024 has to be the United Arab Emirates, as Ras Al Khaimah (6th), Abu Dhabi (9th) and Dubai (10th) all scored highly.

Why are we all struggling in Germany?

It was the “expat essentials” category, which includes the subcategories digital life, administration topics, housing and language, which sunk the German cities to the bottom of the ranking like a ring binder of Steuererklärungen. 

In every German city included in the ranking, we feel like navigating the essentials is unnecessarily taxing. Düsseldorf ranked 47th in this category, Frankfurt in 49th, Munich in 50th, Cologne 51st, Hamburg in 52nd and Berlin in 53rd, meaning only German cities took the bottom six spots in this category.

More specifically, Germany’s sluggish attempts to digitise government services, the increasing unaffordability of most cities - particularly Hamburg and Munich, inaccessibility to prompt healthcare services and a lack of openness for making friends, were all cited as the main complaints.

“Paperwork often still needs to be sent by regular mail or you have to go in person to an office to figure it out. And there are often long wait times for appointments of any kind (with government agencies, doctors, etc.),” a Ukrainian in Berlin told InterNations.

One thing we are still grateful for is Germany’s employee protections and healthy attitudes to work. “Germany puts a lot of emphasis on work-life balance; there’s high job security and a social welfare system,” said a Sierra Leonean living in Munich.

But while we may have free time to enjoy, many of us have no pals to spend it with. “Germans are generally cold compared to the people in my home country. They are not as nice to strangers,” a South African in Frankfurt told the survey. We’re all stuck being friends with each other.

Germany is making things easier…and harder, for migrants

In InterNation’s surveys of recent years, we have dubbed Germany “unhappy and lonely”, “the hardest country to start a new life”, “tech-phobic and unfriendly” and “isolating and uptight”, a far cry from the 2014 survey, which saw Germany named the 12th best country in the world for expats. Where did it all go so wrong?

As Germany continues to reflect on 16 years of a CDU government run by Angela Merkel, the former chancellor’s name is becoming less synonymous with stability, and more associated with the eponymous “merkeln”, the act of delaying transitions and avoiding big decisions.

Whether effectively or not, Scholz’s now-dead SPD-Greens-FDP coalition aimed for a mild rebrand of Germany as a country of migration, passing the dual citizenship law, Skilled Migration Act and introducing the Chancenkarte. In contrast, while speaking good German is still necessary to find well-paid work in Germany, federal funding for integration courses is set to be cut by half in 2025, from 1,1 billion to 500 million.

Meanwhile, national crises, such as the worker shortage, housing crisis, inflation and downturn in Germany’s export market, against the backdrop of international crises; escalating war in Ukraine and Palestine and climate change, mean life is getting harder for everyone in Germany.

Best and worst cities for internationals

In all, here are the 10 best expat cities of 2024, according to InterNations:

1. Valencia, Spain
2. Málaga, Spain
3. Alicante, Spain
4. Panama City, Panama
5. Mexico City, Mexico
6. Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates
7. Madrid, Spain
8. Bangkok, Thailand
9. Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
10. Dubai, United Arab Emirates

By contrast, here are the worst expat cities:

1. Vancouver, Canada
2. Hamburg, Germany
3. Toronto, Canada
4. Munich, Germany
5. Istanbul, Turkey
6. Cologne, Germany
7. Milan, Italy
8. Berlin, Germany
9. Frankfurt, Germany
10. Rome, Italy

For more information, and to see which other cities made the ranking, check out the official website.

Thumb image credit: Lina Zavgorodnia / Shutterstock.com