Glasgow has been named the friendliest city in the UK, and this time nobody’s really surprised. The city topped Conde Nast Traveller’s Readers’ Choice Awards 2025 in the friendliest cities category with a score of 97.00 out of 100, successfully defending the title it also won in 2024.
Manchester came second, but not close. Edinburgh took bronze for the third year running, and five more UK cities made the top ten without a published exact order between them.
So who else made the cut, and does being friendly actually save you any money on a trip there? Let’s get into it.
Who actually made the top ten?
The rankings come from Conde Nast Traveller’s Readers’ Choice Awards 2025, published in October 2025. Readers scored cities on how welcoming and friendly they felt, and Glasgow’s gap over second place was substantial: nearly four full points.
| Rank | City | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Glasgow | 97.00 |
| 2 | Manchester | 93.33 |
| 3 | Edinburgh | 93.04 |
| 4 | Bath | 92.50 |
| 5 | Cambridge | 90.00 |
Also inside the top ten, though Conde Nast Traveller didn’t publish an exact running order for this group: Belfast, London, Brighton, Liverpool and Aberdeen. Worth noting, this is a different list to the outlet’s separate “Best Cities” ranking, which Bath topped.
Friendliest and best are not the same table, and it’s easy to conflate the two if you’re skimming headlines.
Why does Glasgow keep winning this?
Glasgow’s reputation for warmth isn’t new. Locals will tell you it’s the patter: quick, self-deprecating humour that puts strangers at ease within about thirty seconds of a conversation starting.
Readers voting in a poll like this tend to be scoring their actual lived experience, taxi drivers who chat, bar staff who remember your order, strangers who help with directions without being asked twice.
Back-to-back wins in 2024 and 2025 suggest this isn’t a one-off blip either. A single good weekend can flatter a city’s score, but Glasgow topping the table two years running points to something more consistent than luck.
It also helps that Glasgow doesn’t rely purely on postcard scenery to win people over. Visitors regularly mention feeling looked after rather than just looked at, which is a different thing entirely from a city simply having nice architecture or a famous skyline.
That distinction, being made to feel welcome rather than just passing through, is exactly what a friendliest city survey is designed to pick up on.
What's going on with Edinburgh?
Edinburgh’s third-place finish here is a nice twist, because the same city also showed up joint third and fifth in a separate survey of Britain’s rudest cities. Two different studies, two different panels, and Edinburgh manages to place near the top of both the nice list and the not-so-nice one.
It’s not really a contradiction: friendliness surveys and rudeness surveys measure different behaviours, and a capital city with heavy tourist footfall through its Old Town will naturally collect a wider spread of experiences than a smaller place.
Glasgow, notably, didn’t feature in that rudest-cities list at all, which only strengthens its case here.
What does a weekend in the UK's friendliest city actually cost you?
Here’s where it gets interesting for your wallet. Look back at that top five table: Bath and Cambridge, both in the south of England, sit fourth and fifth.
Both are also among the more expensive UK cities for a short break, with hotel rates, restaurant prices and even train fares generally running higher than in Scotland’s biggest city.
A weekend in Glasgow typically works out cheaper across the board: accommodation, food and drink, and getting around the city centre on foot or by subway rather than relying on taxis. You’re not paying a premium for the warm welcome, which is a nice change from most “best of” travel lists where the top spot usually comes with the top price tag.
- Hotels: city centre stays in Glasgow tend to undercut comparable options in Bath or Cambridge, particularly outside peak festival season.
- Food and drink: a night out or a sit-down meal generally costs less than the same in the south of England’s tourist-heavy cities.
- Getting around: Glasgow’s compact centre and subway network keep travel costs down compared with cities that lean more heavily on taxis or longer walks between attractions.
None of that means Bath or Cambridge aren’t worth visiting, both plainly have plenty going for them, or readers wouldn’t have voted them into the top five at all. It just means the cheapest weekend on this particular list isn’t the one you’d automatically assume, and it happens to be the friendliest one too.
If you’re weighing up a UK city break and budget matters as much as atmosphere, it’s worth putting the friendliest city on the shortlist. You could end up with the better welcome and the smaller bill, and that combination is rarer than it should be.
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Disclaimer: Content on this page is for informational purposes and does not constitute financial advice. Always do your own research before making a financially related decision.
