Norway has finished at the bottom of the 2026 Expat Insider survey by InterNations, ranking 31st out of 31 destinations. The report describes foreign residents there as the unhappiest in the whole survey and calls the country the world’s loneliest place. The findings, reported by The Local Norway, put the Nordic country behind every other destination covered by the survey on overall expat happiness.
Social life is the main problem. Some 72 per cent of respondents in Norway said it is difficult to make local friends, more than 30 points above the global average of 40 per cent. Just over half, 51 per cent, said their friends and acquaintances are mostly other expats, against 37 per cent worldwide. Only a quarter said they were content with their social life in Norway, compared with 54 per cent across all destinations. Taken together, the figures suggest that many newcomers end up building their social circles among other foreigners rather than with Norwegians.
Opinions of Norwegians themselves were also cool. Only 37 per cent of respondents found locals friendly in general, compared with 63 per cent globally, and the same share found them friendly towards foreign residents, against a global figure of 61 per cent. “Expats feel neither at home nor welcome in Norway,” the report concluded. A British resident living in Bærum told the survey that the cost of living and the difficulty of making friends made Norway a lonely country to live in.
The wider wellbeing figures point the same way. Some 46 per cent of respondents said they were content with life in Norway, well below the global average of 70 per cent, and only 31 per cent said they felt at home in the country, compared with 61 per cent worldwide. Respondents also named limited job openings, high costs and a feeling of having little to do as reasons for their unhappiness.
Norway does have strengths in the eyes of the people who move there. It scored well in the Environment and Climate category, but it came last for Ease of Settling In, an index in which it has now sat in the bottom 10 for seven years running. The survey draws on responses from thousands of foreign citizens living around the world and covers 31 destinations in total. For Norway, the result shows a clear gap between how foreign residents rate the country’s natural surroundings and how they experience daily social life once they arrive.
