UAE ranks 4th best country in the world for expats in Expat Insider 2026
The UAE placed 4th globally among the best countries for foreign residents in the annual Expat Insider survey by InterNations. What drives the result — and why expat rankings are a leading indicator for the rental market.
The UAE ranked fourth in the world among the best countries for foreign residents, according to the annual Expat Insider survey by InterNations, one of the largest expat communities globally. This is a survey of the people who actually moved: respondents rate work, finances, housing, bureaucracy, safety — and whether they would recommend the country to others.
What the UAE scores on
- Safety and stability. Reliably the highest-scoring block: a country where you can leave a laptop on a café table earns points across several categories at once.
- Bureaucracy that lives in an app. Visa, residency, bank account, driving licence, tenancy registration — procedures that take weeks in Europe close in days here. For anyone relocating, it is the first and strongest impression.
- Taxes. Zero on personal income — an argument that needs no elaboration.
- Work and pay. The job market is growing and salaries are rising by an average of 3.4% in 2026 — conspicuous against stagnant wages in Europe.
Why an expat ranking is a rental-market indicator
Expat Insider differs from bank and consultancy rankings in one way: it is compiled not by analysts but by tenants themselves. Fourth place in the world is an aggregated "recommend" from people who already moved — word of mouth at planetary scale. Recent years show a simple sequence: first a country climbs the expat rankings, then resident inflows grow, then rents rise in the districts those residents move to.
The inflow is already visible in the statistics: in the first half of 2026 alone, Dubai issued more than a million residence visas. Each one is either a rented apartment now or, a few years out, a purchased one.
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Practical takeaways
- For landlords — long-let demand is fundamentally underpinned: people are coming to live, not to holiday.
- For buyers — watch the districts where the working middle-class expat settles: JVC, Dubai Hills, Town Square, Arjan. That is where the survey's "recommend" turns into viewing requests.
- For sceptics — yes, the ranking is subjective, and that is its strength: the person who sets your rent is the surveyed expat, not an analyst.
Based on the Expat Insider survey by InterNations.
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