Canada’s top 10 cities for 2026, based on factors such as quality of life, human capital, and economics, are spread across six provinces, according to Nov. 10 ranking released by Oxford Economics (OE).
Among the Canadian cities taking top spots are Toronto (Ontario), Vancouver (British Columbia), and Montreal (Quebec).
OE’s ranking of Canada’s top 10 cities was determined by evaluating performance across five categories: Economics, Human Capital, Quality of Life, Environment, and Governance, each measured using multiple indicators.
OE measures each city as a Functional Urban Area rather than by municipal boundaries, combining its urban core with its surrounding commuting zones.
On that basis, the top Canadian cities in OE’s 2026 ranking are as follows:
| Rank | City |
|---|---|
| 1 | Toronto (Ontario) |
| 2 | Vancouver (British Columbia) |
| 3 | Montreal (Quebec) |
| 4 | Calgary (Alberta) |
| 5 | Ottawa-Gatineau (Ontario, Quebec) |
| 6 | Edmonton (Alberta) |
| 7 | Kitchener–Cambridge–Waterloo (Ontario) |
| 8 | Halifax (Nova Scotia) |
| 9 | Quebec City (Quebec) |
| 10 | Winnipeg (Manitoba) |
OE’s Top Canadian Cities in 2026 ranking is drawn from its broader 2026 Global Cities Index released on September 16, which publishes overall and category-specific scores for only the top 100/1,000 cities it analyzes.
Four Canadian cities qualified for the global top 100, with their respective scores outlined below:
| City | Overall score | Economics | Human Capital | Quality of Life | Environment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toronto (Ontario) | 84.9 | 77.7 | 79.0 | 70.1 | 71.8 |
| Vancouver (British Columbia) | 83.3 | 68.6 | 77.0 | 72.0 | 88.0 |
| Montreal (Quebec) | 75.9 | 67.0 | 63.4 | 75.4 | 66.5 |
| Calgary (Alberta) | 74.9 | 61.7 | 74.0 | 70.4 | 61.2 |
Governance scores are identical across all Canadian cities (90.0), as OE evaluates this category at the national rather than city level.
Methodology
OE’s Canada-specific release draws on data from the 2026 Global Cities Index, the third edition of the report.
Cities are assessed across five categories. While not an exhaustive list, the indicators below reflect what OE considers the most relevant traits for comparing cities, based on the city-level data available:
- Economics: Assesses the size and outlook of a city’s economy, including GDP and GDP per person, five-year GDP and employment growth forecasts, economic stability over the past decade and economic diversity.
- Human Capital: Reflects the strength of a city’s talent base, including population growth and age profile, educational attainment, university rankings, major corporate headquarters and the share of foreign-born residents.
- Quality of Life: Captures residents’ well-being, including income levels and equality, housing and utility costs, life expectancy, homicide rates, and access to recreation and cultural sites.
- Environment: Evaluates a city’s environmental conditions and climate risk, including air quality, carbon emissions intensity, exposure to natural hazards such as flooding, earthquakes and wildfires, and temperature and rainfall anomalies.
- Governance: Measures institutional strength at the national level, including the rule of law, political stability, the business environment and corruption control, and civil liberties.
For each indicator, OE assigned the highest-scoring city in the index a score of 100 and the lowest-scoring city a score of 0, with all other cities’ scores distributed across that range.
Indicator scores within each category were then combined, and the resulting category totals were normalized to produce a category score for each city.
OE then calculated each city’s overall score as a weighted average of its five category scores, with Economics accounting for 30%, Human Capital and Quality of Life 25% each, and Environment and Governance 10% each, publishing scores only for its top 100 cities
OE is a private, independent economic advisory firm that produces research and forecasts covering more than 200 countries, 100 industries, and 8,000 cities.