The Anholt Nation Brands Index (NBI) for 2026 came out in late October. It is the thirtieth edition of the index that Simon Anholt started in 2005, the longest-running measure of how countries are seen around the world. Every year, 40,000 people in 20 countries rate 50 nations on six areas: exports, governance, culture, people, tourism, and investment and immigration.
This year there is something new. Until now, the NBI results were restricted to the governments that pay for it, with only a short press release for everyone else. For 2026, Anholt & Co. has published a general summary that anyone can read.
The main results: Japan is first for the fourth year in a row, Italy rises to second, the United States falls further to 17th, and China makes the biggest gain of all. We last covered the index in its 2024 edition. Below we look at what changed and what it means.
The top 10 nation brands in 2026
- Japan (no change)
- Italy (up 2)
- Canada (no change)
- Switzerland (up 1)
- Germany (down 3)
- France (up 2)
- United Kingdom (down 1)
- Spain (up 2)
- Australia (down 2)
- Sweden (down 1)
Places 11 to 20 go to Norway, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland, New Zealand, Scotland, the United States, Ireland, Belgium and Greece.
Italy breaks up the Japan and Germany pairing
Japan and Germany had shared the top two places since 2023. This year Italy moves up two places to second. Italy is also first for favourability, the simple question of how much people like a country. That makes it the second most admired country in the index and the best liked.
Germany drops three places to fifth. Its loss is small, three tenths of a point, and Anholt stresses that Germany’s reputation is not in trouble. But the scores at the top are now so close that a small loss in a good year is enough to lose several places. France and Spain each move up two places, to sixth and eighth.
The US leaves the top group
The United States fell seven places in 2025 and left the top ten for the first time. This year it falls again, from 14th to 17th. For favourability it drops from 23rd to 28th, after being 14th as recently as 2024. Its score fell by about a third of a point while the average country gained about two thirds of a point, so the real loss is close to a full point in one year.
The NBI also groups countries into “Brand Bands”, a little like credit ratings. Since the bands were introduced in 2024, every country in the top band has stayed there, except the US. It has now moved down one band, where it sits with Brazil, China, Greece, Mexico, Portugal, South Korea and Türkiye.
What changed is where the losses come from. In 2025, America’s allies downgraded it most. This year, G7 respondents left it where it was. The new losses come from countries that used to rate the US highly: on average, respondents in the BRICS+ countries moved it from 9th to 12th, and Indian respondents from 3rd to 10th. Americans themselves rate their country higher than last year, so the gap between how Americans see the US and how the rest of the world sees it is now close to 15 points.
On one question, whether a country behaves responsibly on international peace and security, the US now ranks 46th out of 50. Anholt comments that the US does not always fall far each year, but it has been falling for a long time. That steady decline is what signals real long-term damage.
China: from a cost to a gain
China makes the biggest gain of any country measured in both years: nearly two points, moving from 29th to 26th. Its image improved in 15 of the 19 countries that rate it, and most of all among American respondents, who moved it from 45th to 34th.
China now ranks second in the world for its contribution to science and technology, and in 14 of 18 panel countries people rate it above the US on that question. But it is still 43rd for governance and 37th for favourability. In short, people respect China more than they like it.
This year Anholt introduced a new feature in the General Report called Brand Premium, a way of estimating the economic value of a country’s image. Using 18 years of NBI data, the model estimates how much bigger or smaller a country’s economy is because of how the world sees it, after taking out the factors that shape any economy. For most of the last decade, China’s weak image cost it around 1% of GDP, and more than 7% after the pandemic. In 2026 that has turned around: its image now adds about 0.9% of GDP, or around US$181 billion in 2028. Anholt calls this, together with the US decline, the most important pair of findings in years.
Other findings worth knowing
Greenland enters at 35th. Few people know much about it (it is 44th for familiarity), yet it ranks 21st for governance. Anholt calls this the Nordic premium: people who know little about a country fill the gap with what they think about its region.
The “middle powers” people recognise are fewer than politicians think. The Nordic and Baltic countries and Canada have very similar profiles, with Australia and New Zealand close by. All score higher than expected on governance and on investment and immigration, and lower on culture and tourism. Japan and Germany, often named as middle powers too, look different: their strongest area is exports, carried by their well-known consumer brands.
South Korea keeps climbing. It has shown the steepest image growth of any country since it joined the index in 2008. It is now 22nd overall and 7th for exports, two places short of the top 20. Mexico and Türkiye moved up a band this year, while Argentina moved down and fell six places to 36th.
War and reputation. Russia gained more than twice the average and moved up one place, though it remains in the bottom six. Ukraine gained less than the average. Israel and Palestine both gained but stay in the last two places. Anholt’s reading is that the reputational cost of a long war is paid mostly at the start, and that countries seen as victims receive no extra sympathy.
A good year for almost everyone. The average score rose by 0.6 points, and 40 of the 46 countries measured in both years improved. Anholt calls this the “mood of humanity”: most countries tend to rise or fall together, often for no clear reason.
Our reading
Look at the long trend, not one year. Anholt himself says not to read too much into one change of rank or band, and certainly not without statistical significance testing. The US matters in part because it has been falling for ten years. And because most countries rose this year, a better score for your country may simply reflect the general mood. Compare your movement with the average before you celebrate, and remember always to look at points as well as ranks: the movement of other countries in the Index can of course push your rank up or down.
The NBI speaks the language of money. With Brand Premium, Anholt complements Brand Finance in putting a dollar figure on reputation, but in a different way. Japan shows why that matters: it leads the NBI, yet lost 14% in Brand Finance’s Nation Brand Value this year. We compare both approaches, and the other major rankings of 2026, in our article on Nation Brand Value 2026.
For less-known places, the neighbourhood is the brand. Greenland shows how strongly people fill gaps with their picture of a region. For smaller countries, regions and cities, working with neighbours on a shared image can be as important as their own brand.
Behaviour shapes image more than messaging. In his conclusion, Anholt writes that he knows of no country that improved its standing through messaging alone. The strongest driver of a good image is, in his words, “behaving yourself”: countries are admired when they help solve the problems everyone worries about. This matches what we hear in our interviews. As Andrew Keable put it in our recent conversation, delivery builds reputation.
How the index works
The NBI is based on Simon Anholt’s 1998 Hexagon model of six areas through which countries build their image: exports, governance, culture, people, tourism, and investment and immigration. Each year, 40,000 people in 20 panel countries rate 50 nations. The overall score is the average of the six areas. The 2026 survey was carried out in late July and August. Anholt & Co. has run the index in-house for the last three years, after nearly two decades in which it was carried out by external research firms.
Read the full 2026 Anholt Nation Brands Index General Report. For more country rankings, explore our Rankings Overview and the Country Observatory.
