The 10 best countries on Earth (according to you)

Telegraph

4 days ago

The Telegraph Travel Awards are a diverse and wide-ranging phenomenon which help to take the temperature of the travel industry. Across 20 categories, their broad gaze takes in everything from cruise operators and ski specialists to the top-performing airlines. And in all cases, the results are underpinned by the opinions of you, the readers.
Among the most coveted of the awards is your favourite country on the planet. It is a category both hotly contested and static in its results – since the first awards in 1998, only five countries have taken the title. As a readership, you are consistent in your choices, and loyal to your favourites.
This does not mean, of course, that the final list does not make for fascinating reading. The top 10 for 2025, unveiled below, contains a few old friends, and a raft of the usual suspects, but also a couple of relative newcomers and intriguing variables. Other countries, meanwhile, have fallen away.
The top 10 is analysed here – though you can scroll down for the full ranking. These are the countries that – as far as you are concerned – are the best the globe has to offer. Who is anyone to say you are wrong?
10. Botswana
2023 position: 10th
There is a longstanding affinity between The Telegraph readership and Africa; one which speaks of adventurous journeys on a fascinating continent, and safari trips where wildlife roars on vast savannahs. The data behind The Telegraph Travel Awards suggests that the relationship has cooled just a little in the past two years – you voted three African countries into your collective top 10 in 2023 (and one of them to the top of the table), but only two have made the cut in 2025.
That Botswana is one half of that pair, and that it has stood still in 10th, says much about the unchanging aspect of its appeal. It is, of course, a revered destination for flora and fauna, the Okavango Delta shimmering as one of the planet's foremost expanses of wetland – crocodiles in the shallows, leopards on the shore. And if those creatures do not change their spots, why should you change your opinions?
9. Costa Rica
2023 position: 9th
There was perhaps a time when Central America was seen as too removed from the beaten path for Telegraph readers to consider. Perhaps it still is; you have to scan all the way down to 55th place in this table to find the Central American destination that holds the second-highest place in your affections (Mexico), and to 71st for the third (Panama).
But Costa Rica is an outlier. It has been on an upward curve in these awards for more than a decade, rising from 24th in 2014 to a ninth place in 2023 that it has retained this year. There is no mystery to this. With a double coast – one stretch of seafront on the Pacific, the other on the Caribbean Sea – it has beaches galore. In San José it has a capital which sings with history. And the 5,436ft-high Arenal is as perfect a symmetrically shaped volcano as you could ever wish to see. Happily, it is dormant. Costa Rica is anything but.
8. The Maldives
2023 position: 3rd
Trouble in paradise? In the last six editions of The Telegraph Travel Awards, you have ranked the Maldives as either your second or third-favourite country, never lower – so a drop to eighth is comparatively precipitous. There could be various reasons to explain this.
The Indian Ocean archipelago is rarely viewed as a low-cost playground, and in a time of inflation and soaring costs, heads may have turned to sunny alternatives – Dubai, Thailand, even Saudi Arabia – where the quality of seafront accommodation is just as high. That said, talk of a Maldivian decline may be exaggerated. Even in eighth, the island nation is still, by far, your favourite corner of the earth for beach-based relaxation; you have to look to 18th for the next country generally regarded as a pure sun-and-sand destination (Mauritius); to 31st for your top Caribbean hotspot (Barbados). As you were.
7. Peru
2023 position: 25th
As a readership, it is surely fair to say that, when it comes to travel, you know what you like – and like what you know; eight of the countries you voted into your top 10 in the latest Telegraph Travel Awards featured in the same elevated list in 2023 (and a ninth was one place outside the elite, in 11th). Peru is a clear exception to this rule. While its 2023 ranking (25th) was its lowest in a decade, it had not breached the top 10 since 2014, so its return to the upper echelons here is a surprise. But only a small one.
Perhaps its upsurge can be attributed to a renewed post-pandemic wanderlust, but this splendid slice of South America is never far from the collective holiday bucket list – Machu Picchu an enigma on its Andean bluff, Colca Canyon just as grand – but nowhere near as visited – as its US cousin, Lima a capital full of food and flair. The big question may be: why only seventh?
6. Australia
2023 position: 5th
As with the ruthless accuracy of its cricket team 's fast bowlers, or the heat of its summer while Europe shivers in winter's grip, Australia is a picture of reliability when it comes to The Telegraph Travel Awards. In the past 11 years, it has polled either fifth (twice), eighth (twice) or sixth (three times, including this latest iteration) in the tally of your favourite countries. For two of those years, its borders were all but closed to international tourists – but the pandemic may as well not have happened for all its apparent impact on your desire to go Down Under.
Maybe this is because, with the distance involved, Australia is a dream destination whose attractiveness is immune to global events. Or perhaps it is that Sydney (highly rated in the city version of this list) is a metropolitan superstar, and Uluru is unique. Either way, Australia may not be a neighbour, but it is definitely a good friend.
5. Greece
2023 position: 11th
There is little about the European summer at which Greece does not excel. Its islands, strewn across Ionian and Aegean waters, are glorious oases in those precious high-season weeks of July and August – restaurant tables arranged along harbour walls, the catch of the day on the specials board, carafes of local vino going down nicely in the afternoon heat.
This image is repeated from Kefalonia to Karpathos. As is a visible history, dug into hillsides from the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis to the ruins of Knossos on Crete. The only real puzzle is why this Hellenic vision of heaven has not found full favour with you, the readers: fifth place in the 2025 Telegraph Travel Awards is the first time Greece has been voted one of your top 10 favourite countries in more than a decade. Only you can explain this oddity, but the data suggests that you are doing so in increasing numbers.
4. South Africa
2023 position: 1st
The 2023 edition of The Telegraph Travel Awards threw up one or two unexpected results – including a rare appearance for Rio de Janeiro among your top 10 cities. But the most notable was South Africa's success – ascending to the throne as your favourite country, and in doing so, breaking a run of seven successive coronations for the previous winner. If this wonderland at the bottom of a spectacular continent has failed to keep the crown in 2025, it has hardly escaped your minds entirely.
Fourth position maintains South Africa's decade-long streak in the top 10, and acts as a reminder that few countries have quite as much to offer to travellers: one of the planet's most beautiful cities in Cape Town (also highly ranked in these awards' cities poll), wondrous wines in the Cape vineyards, the road-trip delights of the Garden Route, the safari sensation that is Kruger National Park.
3. India
2023 position: 8th
If there are any concerns about visiting India – the distance involved, the heat, the flickers of war on its north-western border which caused the Foreign Office to update its travel advice in May – then they are not apparent in this list. The largest country of the Asian sub-continent has jumped considerably in your collective opinion since the Covid crisis dissipated; from regularly polling in the mid-teens for much of the 2010s, it has reached a dizzying elevation here in 2025.
India's ranking of eighth in 2023 was the first time it had been named in your top 10 countries in more than a decade. Its climbing a further five places is indication of its splendour as a destination – Delhi awash with history, Mumbai revelling in its Bollywood vibe, Agra the frequent star of the show thanks to the Taj Mahal, Goa a beach break from it all. Where to begin? The choice is almost endless.
2. Japan
2023 position: 4th
With the exception of 6,000 miles, 14 hours' flying time, and the widths of Europe and Asia, nothing comes between The Telegraph readership and Japan. Since 2015, the Land of the Rising Sun has finished no lower than fourth in the voting for your favourite countries. Its return to second (also achieved in 2019) feels like a correction of a two-position slip in 2023 that was surely the result of a Covid-enforced absence from the planet's travel plans.
There is so much to love about a holiday in Japan that it is impossible to sketch more than a brief outline here, but any trip should take in the neon districts of Tokyo, the tranquil temples of Kyoto, the war echoes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and, of course, the fabulously fast shinkansen trains that link said places. Then again, you can also make for Sapporo's ski resorts. No wonder Japan attracts so many of you to its side.
1. New Zealand
2023 position: 2nd
And so the world settled back onto its axis, and the baffled expressions were wiped away. New Zealand's rank in this list has generally been a binary sequence – a repetition of the number one that had gone uninterrupted for more than a decade until the 2023 results sparked a sudden drop to… second. As with many things, the blame here can surely be apportioned to the pandemic, and the way it kept Australia's near-neighbour closed off from the rest of the planet until well into 2022.
Now that a relative normality has resurfaced, New Zealand is – to borrow a football expression – back on its perch. Will you, The Telegraph readers ever tire of it – of the fjords cut into the west flank of the South Island; of the vineyards that flutter around Marlborough; of Aoraki/Mount Cook in its snowy might; of the dining scenes in Auckland and Wellington? You might. But then, you probably won't.