Melbourne has just been named the world’s friendliest city for 2026 in Condé Nast Traveller’s Readers’ Choice Awards, with a score of 98.52 from almost 300,000 votes. Perth also made the top ten.
It’s a reader-voted poll, so it measures how welcome people felt, not hard data. But I think it says something useful.
Friendliness isn’t only about people. It’s also about how easily a city works for those who arrive: trams that run, services that connect, and networks you never have to think about. The best welcome is when nothing gets in the way.
That’s the part of the story I see up close. Behind every smooth visit, remote workday and cloud-powered business is infrastructure that most people never notice: fibre, data centres and the subsea cables that bring Australia online. As Melbourne grows as a hub for digital infrastructure, I hope we keep earning the reputation the city has just been handed.
Congratulations Melbourne. Now let’s keep the foundations as strong as the welcome.
