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Edition of August 2026 · sealed on release · never revised

ThonRetire Retirement Index 2026
The ranking as it stood in August 2026, kept that way.

Everything else on this site moves. Country pages hide a figure the month it falls out of its re-check window; the live rankings reorder themselves whenever a threshold changes. That is right for someone choosing where to live and wrong for anyone quoting us, because a sentence written today should not turn false in November. So once a year we take the whole ranking, freeze it, give it a date, and leave it alone. This is that record for 2026. Quote a number from this page and it will still say the same thing when your reader clicks through.

17destinations, each ranked on the same 39 criteria
2026-07the month every underlying figure was last verified against its issuing authority
6single-measure orders published alongside the headline one, all frozen together

Cite this edition

Published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. Use any of it, including commercially — credit ThonRetire and link back. Neither WhereNext nor RetireFinder ships a DOI or BibTeX block; this one does, and the key does not change.

Cite asNguyễn Thành Dân (2026). ThonRetire Retirement Index 2026. Frozen 2026-08. https://thonretire.com/edition/2026 — CC-BY-4.0

Permanent identifier10.5281/zenodo.21817351

BibTeX

@misc{thonretire-index-2026,
  author       = {Nguyễn Thành Dân},
  title        = {{ThonRetire Retirement Index 2026}},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {8},
  version      = {1.3},
  publisher    = {ThonRetire},
  howpublished = {\url{https://thonretire.com/edition/2026}},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.21817351},
  note         = {Sealed edition, verified July 2026. SHA256: 45f2266f7801ff60…},
  license      = {CC-BY-4.0}
}

Key thonretire-index-2026 is stable. Later editions arrive as separate entries rather than overwriting this one.

The sealed edition file (JSON)

The 2026 ranking

Weighted across all 39 criteria with no passport or life-stage overlay applied — the neutral baseline. Panama leads this edition. On the live site the same table rearranges itself once you tell it your passport and your age, and that is the version to use if you are actually deciding something; this one exists so a published figure has an address that holds still.

#DestinationRegionScore
1 PanamaCentral America87
2 ThailandSoutheast Asia84
3 UruguaySouth America84
4 PhilippinesSoutheast Asia83
5 MalaysiaSoutheast Asia82
6 GreeceMediterranean81
7 MaltaMediterranean80
8 ItalyWestern Europe80
9 CyprusMediterranean78
10 Costa RicaCentral America77
11 MexicoNorth America76
12 MauritiusIndian Ocean76
13 Indonesia (Bali)Southeast Asia76
14 SpainWestern Europe75
15 PortugalWestern Europe74
16 UAE (Dubai)Middle East70
17 VietnamSoutheast Asia60

Six other orders, same 17 places

A composite score answers a question nobody actually asks. These six sort on one measured thing each, and no two of them agree — which is the useful part, because it shows how much of any ranking is the ranker’s opinion about what matters. The percentage under each heading is how many of the 136 possible pairings swap places against the headline order above.

Cheapest

Monthly cost, couple · 37.5% of pairings reorder

  1. 1Vietnam$1,400
  2. 2Philippines$1,500
  3. 3Mexico$1,700
  4. 4Indonesia (Bali)$1,700
  5. 5Thailand$1,800
  6. 6Malaysia$1,900
  7. 7Costa Rica$2,000
  8. 8Mauritius$2,000
  9. 9Panama$2,100
  10. 10Greece$2,200
  11. 11Cyprus$2,200
  12. 12Uruguay$2,300
  13. 13Italy$2,400
  14. 14Spain$2,500
  15. 15Malta$2,600
  16. 16Portugal$2,600
  17. 17UAE (Dubai)$3,500

Best healthcare

Healthcare rating · 50.7% of pairings reorder

  1. 1Spain9/10
  2. 2Portugal9/10
  3. 3Malta8.8/10
  4. 4Malaysia8.7/10
  5. 5Italy8.6/10
  6. 6UAE (Dubai)8.5/10
  7. 7Thailand8.2/10
  8. 8Uruguay8/10
  9. 9Cyprus8/10
  10. 10Greece7.9/10
  11. 11Panama7.8/10
  12. 12Costa Rica7.8/10
  13. 13Mexico7.5/10
  14. 14Mauritius7/10
  15. 15Philippines6.8/10
  16. 16Indonesia (Bali)6.5/10
  17. 17Vietnam6.3/10

Safest

Safety rating · 61.8% of pairings reorder

  1. 1UAE (Dubai)8.8/10
  2. 2Portugal8.5/10
  3. 3Malta8.4/10
  4. 4Cyprus8.3/10
  5. 5Spain8.2/10
  6. 6Italy7.9/10
  7. 7Greece7.8/10
  8. 8Uruguay7.6/10
  9. 9Malaysia7.5/10
  10. 10Vietnam7.5/10
  11. 11Mauritius7.4/10
  12. 12Panama7/10
  13. 13Thailand6.8/10
  14. 14Costa Rica6.8/10
  15. 15Indonesia (Bali)6.5/10
  16. 16Philippines6/10
  17. 17Mexico6/10

Closest to home

Flight home · 31.6% of pairings reorder

  1. 1Indonesia (Bali)6h
  2. 2Philippines8h
  3. 3Malaysia8h
  4. 4Vietnam8h
  5. 5Thailand9h
  6. 6Mauritius12h
  7. 7UAE (Dubai)14h
  8. 8Mexico18h
  9. 9Cyprus22h
  10. 10Malta24h
  11. 11Italy24h
  12. 12Spain24h
  13. 13Portugal24h
  14. 14Greece25h
  15. 15Panama30h
  16. 16Costa Rica34h
  17. 17Uruguay38h

Lowest tax

Headline rate on your pension · 52.9% of pairings reorder

  1. 1Panama0%
  2. 2Philippines0%
  3. 3Costa Rica0%
  4. 4UAE (Dubai)0%
  5. 5Vietnam0%
  6. 6Thailand0%
  7. 7Uruguay0%
  8. 8Malaysia0%
  9. 9Cyprus0–5%
  10. 10Greece7%
  11. 11Italy7%
  12. 12Mauritius0–20%
  13. 13Malta15%
  14. 14Mexico1.92–35%
  15. 15Indonesia (Bali)5–35%
  16. 16Portugal13–48%
  17. 17Spain19–47%

Easiest residency

Where residency leads · 53.7% of pairings reorder

  1. 1PanamaImmediate
  2. 2UruguayDirect — <1 yr
  3. 3PhilippinesPermanent
  4. 4Costa Rica3 yrs
  5. 5Mexico4 yrs
  6. 6Greece5 yrs
  7. 7Malta5 yrs
  8. 8Italy5 yrs
  9. 9Spain5 yrs
  10. 10Portugal5 yrs
  11. 11Indonesia (Bali)KITAP 3–4 yrs
  12. 12Mauritius5 yrs + $200k
  13. 13CyprusOn grant — long queue
  14. 14UAE (Dubai)Golden Visa
  15. 15ThailandDifficult
  16. 16MalaysiaNo PR route
  17. 17VietnamNear-unattainable

A blank is deliberate. If a figure had passed twice its re-check window by August 2026 we left it out of the edition rather than freeze a number we had stopped standing behind — an empty cell costs a reader nothing, a confidently wrong one costs them a move.

What changed on the way to this edition

Every verified change to the fact store dated on or before 2026-08. Kept here because a ranking with no visible revision history is indistinguishable from one that was written once and never checked again.

How this edition was built

Best-fit is a Thon composite: base country quality + passport overlay (treaty, flight, pension rules) + life-stage overlay (age-open visas, tax-deal runway, healthcare now vs 70+). It is a decision aid, not a prediction.

Some immigration backlogs, bank KYC timelines and insurance quotes move faster than this page. Open gaps are marked in criteria. Always confirm against the official source before acting.

What the figures were checked against

  • Official immigration / residency pages per destination (visa names, age and income thresholds)
  • Tax authority summaries and double-tax treaty texts (AU/US/UK/CA pairs where published)
  • Reputable professional briefings (Big-4 / specialist expat tax notes) for regime shape — not as legal advice
  • Indicative cost-of-living bands cross-checked against public COL indexes (rounded USD/mo)
  • Flight times as typical one-way door-to-door from the origin city hub (not a fare quote)

The full scoring method — every weight and every penalty — is written out on the method page. That page describes the method as it stands today; where it has since been revised, this edition still reflects the version in force in August 2026.

Download it and check the seal

Citation and BibTeX are at the top of this page. Below is the sealed file and its hash — re-hash it yourself and you have checked, without taking our word for anything, that this edition has not been touched since August 2026.

The sealed edition file (JSON)thonretire-2026-countries.csvthonretire-2026-facts.csvthonretire-2026-cities.csv

45f2266f7801ff60ec5760b90369d5c8010e0a2687cb6c34a34e449622f68f13

This page is the archive. The live one is here.

If you are choosing somewhere to live rather than writing about it, do not use this page — it is deliberately out of date the moment a threshold moves.