2026 International
Bicycling Cities

PeopleForBikes City Ratings goes global again for 2026. Using the same Bicycle Network Analysis we apply to more than 3,000 U.S. communities, we scored 403 cities across 38 countries on how well their bike networks connect people to the places they need to go. 42 new cities were added to the program this year, including cities in 12 new countries: Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Hungary, Lithuania, Malaysia, Norway, Peru, Poland, Romania, Switzerland, and Vietnam. New cities are added upon request.

Europe Leads the Way in Great Cities for Biking

European cities have an average City Ratings score of 62 out of 100, ahead of every other region. All but two of the 25 top-scoring international cities are European, led by the Netherlands with Almere, Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Delft all scoring 88.

Methodology Updates

This year’s international City Ratings follow the same methodology updates as our U.S. results, most importantly incorporating updated bicycle facility standards. However, the scoring of cities outside the U.S. does not include census or jobs data. As such, all international cities will have an ‘employment’ score of NA under Opportunity.

Beginning in 2026, population data for international cities comes from WorldPop’s 1 km gridded 2026 population estimates, replacing the uniform synthetic grid used in previous years, which assumed 100 people in every square kilometer of a city. Grid cells are clipped to the city boundary and treated like census blocks, so our Bicycle Network Analysis (BNA) now weights each neighborhood by its estimated population, while cells marked as having no data are kept so the destinations inside them are still counted. This update increases the accuracy of City Ratings scores for international cities.