The Most Loved Countries In The World

Every year, someone asks the world what it really thinks of everyone else, and every year the answers rearrange the furniture. The go-to scorecard for this is RepCore Nations, run by the reputation firm Reputation Lab and led by Fernando Prado, the same analyst who built the original country-reputation study back when it lived at the Reputation Institute. The 2025 edition asks citizens of the G7 to rate the world's 60 biggest economies on how much they admire, respect, and trust them. The headline this time is hard to miss: Switzerland and Canada share the top spot, the Nordics are parked right behind them as usual, and the United States just posted the single biggest fall on the board.

How the Ranking Actually Works

Reputation is squishy, so the method matters. RepCore Nations does not count tourists or tally GDP; it asks people how a country makes them feel. For the 2025 study, Reputation Lab surveyed 61,798 people across 38 countries and scored 74 nations, then published the ranking for the 60 largest economies as judged specifically by the general public in the G7: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Each country gets rated on 22 attributes covering its economy, its politics, its society, and its culture, all rolled into a single reputation score. The short version: this is a popularity contest with a methodology section, and the electorate is the wealthy world.

Switzerland and Canada Take the Crown

Switzerland does this every year, and 2025 is no exception. Two centuries of staying out of other people's wars, a government that mostly works, and a standard of living the rest of the world files under "aspirational" keep it locked near the top. Canada climbed up to join it in first place this year, riding a reputation for openness and level-headed diplomacy that plays especially well abroad. The two effectively tie at the summit, which is why the ranking below has no number two.

Behind them sits the usual Nordic wall. Norway, Sweden, and Finland take the next three spots, with Denmark close behind, and their pitch never really changes: stable institutions, low corruption, and a serious environmental record. When admiration, respect, and trust are the whole game, quiet competence wins it going away.

The Big Mover: America Slides

The story of the 2025 study is the United States, and it is not a happy one. American standing dropped 18 places in a single year, from 30th to 48th, the steepest fall of any country on the list, pushing it down into what Reputation Lab calls the "weak" tier. The study ties the slide to how G7 publics received recent US policy, with the sharpest reputational losses in areas like commitment to the international community, action on climate change, the friendliness of its business environment, and confidence in its leaders. The drop was steepest among close allies: Canadians and Britons marked the US down hardest, while, in a twist the researchers flagged, the one audience where American standing actually improved was Russia. Reputation, it turns out, can move fast when the messaging does.

Winners, Losers, and a Few Surprises

Plenty moved besides the US. Ukraine climbed five spots on a wave of admiration, respect, and trust, and Algeria rose the same amount. Japan gained four places, while Saudi Arabia and Mexico each picked up two. Going the other way, South Korea slid six spots in the wake of a domestic political crisis. At the very bottom, the same three names sit where they sat last year: Iraq, Iran, and Russia.

One structural shift is worth noting. The attribute G7 publics now weigh most heavily is "ethics and responsibility," the bundle that covers climate action, environmental protection, transparency, and human rights. Being rich and powerful no longer buys a top score on its own; the raters increasingly want to know how a country behaves. And the payoff is real money, not just pride. Reputation Lab found that each one-point gain in a country's reputation score lines up with an average 7.2% bump in tourism revenue and a 1% rise in foreign investment, which is why governments pay analysts to track this at all.

The Full Top 10

Here are the ten most admired countries in the world according to the 2025 study. Reputation Lab publishes the ranking and the year-over-year movement rather than a public score for every nation, so this is the order, straight from the survey.

Why Any of This Matters

A country's reputation is not vanity; it is leverage. It decides who visits, who invests, who trusts a handshake, and who gives a nation the benefit of the doubt when things go sideways. What 2025 shows is how quickly that leverage can shift: the winners kept winning by being steady and boring in all the right ways, while the biggest economy on Earth learned that being loud is not the same as being liked. Next year the furniture will move again. It always does.