Amsterdam has been ranked as the 13th most competitive city "Hot Spot" in the world by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Hot Spots 2025 report.

Dominance & Power of cities

The report opens by asserting the growth in the dominance of cities throughout the past 100 years. With currently well over half of the world's population living in urban areas and 80 percent of GDP coming from these areas, the competitiveness of cities is key to growth.

With the population of people living in cities growing by 60 million each year, the focus of this report is on the future competitiveness of these urban areas.

American & European dominance

Despite the recent emergence and surge in competitiveness of many Asian urban areas, European and American cities continue to dominate the ranking. Twenty-one of the top thirty cities are from these two continents with New York and London occupying the top two spots.

Amsterdam has dropped two places to 13th in this years ranking, despite gaining 2.0 points in the index's scoring system. This is mainly due to an improvement from Stockholm (8th) and Chicago (9th) and the notable rise of 14 places by Taipei (joint 11th).

Methodology of the report

The report was conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, a branch of the Economist, commissioned by the Citi group. The competitive standing of cities in 2025 is weighted across eight distinct categories of competitiveness and 32 individual indicators.

Categories include economic strength, physical capital, financial maturity, institutional character, human capital, global appeal, social and cultural character, and environmental and natural hazards.

To view the full report click here.

Top 10 most competitive cities

›  New York
›  London
›  Singapore
›  Hong Kong
›  Tokyo
›  Sydney
›  Paris
›  Stockholm
›  Chicago
›  Toronto

Source: Iamsterdam