// ANNUAL_REPORT

The Data Corridor Smart City Index 2026

213 cities. 82 evidence-based criteria. Zero surveys. The first smart city index where every score can be traced to its public sources.

Published 2026-07-05 · CC BY 4.0 — free to cite and reuse with attribution

Key findings

Cities assessed

213

Average score

54.2%

Global average

59.2%

UK average

45%

Singapore leads the world's smart cities in 2026 with a score of 98.3%, ahead of Sydney (92.4%) and New York City (92.4%). The leaders win on fundamentals — open data, live transit information and digital government — not flagship gadgetry.

UK cities trail the international field by 14.2 points on average (45% vs 59.2%). Birmingham is the UK's strongest smart city at #5 globally (88.9%), followed by Newcastle upon Tyne and Manchester.

The most common gap is integrated mobility. Integrated Multimodal Mobility (MaaS) is majority-absent in 19% of assessed cities, followed by city data platform / urban data exchange (14%) and smart energy & buildings (13%). Digital twins remain rare outside the top tier — majority-absent in 12% of cities.

The top 25 smart cities in 2026

#	City	Score	Criteria present
1	Singapore	98.3%	79/82
2	Sydney	92.4%	73/82
3	New York City	92.4%	74/82
4	Melbourne	89.3%	70/82
5	BirminghamUK	88.9%	70/82
6	Auckland	88%	67/82
7	Seattle	87.9%	68/82
8	Seoul	87.5%	69/82
9	Washington D.C.	87%	66/82
10	Toronto	86.7%	66/82
11	Hong Kong	86.5%	70/82
12	Chicago	86.3%	66/82
13	Boston	85.8%	65/82
14	Canberra	85.5%	66/82
15	Tokyo	85.5%	66/82
16	Brisbane	85.3%	64/82
17	Dubai	85.1%	63/82
18	Dublin	85.1%	63/82
19	Denver	84.6%	64/82
20	San Francisco	83.9%	66/82
21	Los Angeles	83.4%	63/82
22	San Jose	83%	63/82
23	Newcastle upon TyneUK	82.9%	62/82
24	Philadelphia	82.8%	62/82
25	Vancouver	82.7%	59/82

See the full 213-city ranking →

Methodology

Every city is assessed against the DC20 smart city framework: 82 criteria across five axes — data & digital foundation, mobility, environment & resources, governance & people, and economy & method. AI agents gather evidence from official public sources — open data portals, transport authorities, council publications — and each criterion is marked present, partial or absent. Scores are deterministic: the share of assessed criteria present, with partial counting half. No surveys, no self-reporting, and every finding links to its source, so any score can be independently checked.

Unlike fixed-shortlist rankings, coverage isn't capped: any city can be assessed. The 2026 edition covers 75 UK cities and 138 international cities, refreshed continuously — the figures on this page were generated on 2026-07-05.

Cite this report

Data Corridor (2026). The Data Corridor Smart City Index 2026: 213 cities scored on public evidence. https://datacorridor.io/reports/smart-city-index-2026

This report and its data are published under CC BY 4.0: journalists, researchers and city teams are free to quote, chart and republish any figure with a link back to this page. Raw scores are available from the free public API.