Mumbai placed 121st out of 173 cities in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2026 Global Liveability Index, scoring 47.9 out of 100, just behind New Delhi at 120th with 48.1, according to PRESS Insider. Chennai (123rd) and Bengaluru (127th) round out the four Indian cities the index covers; no other Maharashtra city and no Gujarat city feature on the list, which spans 173 cities worldwide, according to Insights on India. Copenhagen tops the index.

Where Mumbai loses points

The EIU scores each city across five weighted categories: stability, culture and environment, healthcare, infrastructure and education. Mumbai scores 60 on stability and 58.3 on education, both respectable, but drops to 51.8 on infrastructure, 41.7 on healthcare and just 33.3 on culture and environment, per PRESS Insider’s figures. Since culture and environment and stability each carry a 25% weight in the index, a weak score in the former does real damage to the overall total even when other categories hold up.

What it means for residents

The low culture-and-environment score reflects factors residents already live with: air pollution, rising temperatures, and waste management gaps that both outlets cite as recurring drags on Indian cities in this year’s index. The healthcare score points to capacity limits in public health infrastructure relative to the population Mumbai serves, not an absence of hospitals but a strain on how far that capacity stretches. Insights on India frames the broader pattern as “unplanned urbanisation”, visible in Mumbai as traffic congestion and uneven housing quality, both of which show up indirectly in the infrastructure score. Residents already deal with these conditions daily; the index simply puts a number on them, measured against 172 other cities worldwide.

What to watch next

The EIU updates this index annually, so next year’s release will show whether any of the specific fixes now underway, BMC’s water and monsoon-infrastructure work among them, move the needle on infrastructure or healthcare scores. Given the categories are weighted rather than averaged evenly, a modest gain in culture and environment would likely move Mumbai’s rank more than similar gains elsewhere. For now, Mumbai remains second among India’s four ranked cities, trailing Delhi by a fraction of a point.

This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.

Sources: PRESS Insider, Insights on India