GTCI 2025 results: top 25 countries, scores and what changed

The 2025 edition is the first in which Singapore leads, and it is also the first built on the revised model that adds AI adoption, workforce resilience and employee wellbeing¹. That makes it two stories: a new order at the top and a new yardstick underneath. This page gives the full top 25 first, then the pillar leaders, the movement against the 2023 edition and the cautions that go with any comparison.

The 2025 ranking: top 25 of 135

Table 1 of the GTCI 2025 report lists every country with its score, income group and region¹. The first 25 rows are reproduced here as printed; every one of them is in the high-income group¹. Norway and Luxembourg share the printed score 69.84 and the report ranks them 7th and 8th¹.

Europe holds 18 of the top 25 places, and the non-European members are Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Israel and the United Arab Emirates, plus Singapore and the United States at the top¹. South Korea left this group and Portugal entered it for the first time¹. The gap is steep after the top ten: from 10th to 25th the score falls from 69.27 to 59.36, about ten points over fifteen places, while the first ten places cover only about four points¹.

The top ten countries in the GTCI 2025 ranking

Singapore is first, Switzerland second, Denmark third, Finland fourth, Sweden fifth, the Netherlands sixth, Norway seventh, Luxembourg eighth, the United States ninth and Australia tenth¹. Singapore’s lead over Switzerland is 73.29 to 73.14, and Switzerland’s over Denmark is 73.14 to 72.05¹. The top two are separated by less than the gap between second and third.

Three patterns run through the ten. High-income economies dominate, and European countries, especially the Nordics, perform strongly across several dimensions¹. Several countries win on one specialism: the Netherlands leads in growing talent, Luxembourg in attracting it¹. And all ten do well on both enablement and Generalist Adaptive Skills¹. Seven of the ten are European¹.

An editor’s reading: the top ten is a club with one stable trait, a strong enabling environment. What distinguishes members is the second trait. Denmark, Finland and Switzerland rank near the top on enabling and retaining talent¹, Luxembourg on attracting it, Singapore on high-level skills¹. That is why a single rank hides more than it shows, and why the pillar table below matters.

Pillar leaders in GTCI 2025

The overall index averages six pillars: Enable, Attract, Grow and Retain on the input side, Vocational and Technical (VT) Skills and Generalist Adaptive (GA) Skills on the output side³. Each pillar has its own leader, and the leaders are not the overall top three.

These ranks come from the report’s table of rankings by pillar¹. Four pillar leaders sit outside the overall top three: Luxembourg (8th overall), the Netherlands (6th), Norway (7th) and the Czech Republic (20th)¹. Israel (23rd overall), the United Arab Emirates (25th) and Ireland (11th) each place second or third on a pillar¹. Singapore is the only country that leads both a pillar and the overall ranking.

The pillar tables also show what the leaders lack. Denmark leads Enable yet ranks 10th on both Attract and Grow¹. Switzerland has all six pillars inside the top ten, with Enable and VT Skills, both 3rd, its strongest¹. A country with no pillar lead can still rank near the top by being solid everywhere.

What changed since the 2023 edition

The index skipped 2024. Following a one-year pause, the 2025 edition arrived with a revised model, and the report asks readers to treat comparisons with earlier editions cautiously¹. Ranks are the safer thing to compare, and only roughly.

Worked example (our arithmetic). The table subtracts each 2025 rank from the 2023 rank, both read from the published tables^1,2.

Of these 25 countries, 12 moved up, 10 moved down and 3 held the same rank^1,2. The headline moves are these.

Singapore up one place, Switzerland down one. Singapore rose from 2nd to 1st and Switzerland fell from 1st to 2nd, its first time off the top in the index’s history^1,2. The 2025 report adds that Singapore’s advance came mainly from Retain, 31st, up from 38th, and from Lifestyle, 32nd, up from 49th¹.

The United States down six places. It fell from 3rd to 9th, outside the top five for the first time since the 2013 edition¹. One other passage of the 2025 report gives a later year instead; the earlier editions’ own tables, set out in who led each edition, do not support it, so this site uses 2013¹. The drivers are weaker GA Skills (13th, down from 5th), Attract (28th, down from 22nd) and Enable (7th, down from 4th)¹.

Sweden up four, Luxembourg up three. Sweden’s four-place climb is the largest among the top fifteen, and Luxembourg returned to the top ten for the first time since 2021¹.

South Korea out, Portugal in. Korea ranked 24th in 2023 and 31st in 2025, with the report pointing to Grow, Retain and VT Skills^1,2. Portugal moved from 27th to 24th^1,2.

Why Singapore ranks first

Singapore’s pillar profile is lopsided, and that is the story of the 2025 result. It is first in GA Skills, Formal Education and the Regulatory Landscape¹. It is second in Attract and fourth in Enable¹. On Retain it is only 31st, and its VT Skills slipped to 13th from 3rd¹.

Switzerland has the opposite shape: nothing worse than 7th, nothing first¹. Singapore is ahead on Attract (2nd against 6th), Grow (5th against 6th) and GA Skills (1st against 5th); Switzerland is ahead on Enable (3rd against 4th), Retain (7th against 31st) and VT Skills (3rd against 13th)¹. High-level skills look decisive. Australia (10th overall) and New Zealand (18th) score higher than Singapore in retaining talent but trail it overall because of Singapore’s much higher ranking in GA Skills¹. For Singapore and its region the result is a defining milestone³.

Regional picture in GTCI 2025

Europe accounts for 18 of the top 25 and leads the 2025 table; Switzerland, Denmark and Finland are close behind one another in the top four¹. Northern America is represented by the United States (9th) and Canada (14th), and Canada ranks ahead of the United States on attracting talent¹.

East, Southeast Asia and Oceania has Singapore at the top, with Australia 10th and New Zealand 18th; the GTCI site says both outperform expectations for their income levels^1,3. Northern Africa and Western Asia is led by Israel at 23rd, with the United Arab Emirates 25th; the UAE ranks 3rd worldwide on Attract, behind Luxembourg and Singapore^1,3. Latin America and the Caribbean is led by Chile at 39th¹.

China is 53rd, and data availability likely played the most important role in the move: China did not take part in the 2025 World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey¹. Read that rank as a coverage effect as much as a performance one.

How to read the 2025 scores

Scores belong to their edition. The 2025 model has 77 indicators across 135 countries, representing over 97% of global GDP and 93% of the world’s population¹. Because the model changed, Singapore’s 73.29 in 2025 cannot be set against a leader’s score from an older edition¹; the story of who led each edition shows why.

Three habits help:

• Quote the edition year with every rank, as in first in GTCI 2025¹, not just first.
• Compare ranks across editions only with a warning, and scores never¹.
• Remember the strong positive correlation between GDP per capita and GTCI scores, so the useful question is who beats their income¹.

The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre audits each edition independently¹. The 2023 report and the index website hold the prior edition and the 2025 key messages^2,3. The audit tests the arithmetic, not whether 77 indicators cover everything about talent. For how the scores are built, read what the index measures. For a different ranking with a different method, the IMD World Talent Ranking 2025 covers 69 economies⁴. For the older scale, see the 2017 results, and the rankings hub lists every edition.