The Friendliest Ad You’ll Ever Meet - Center for Democracy and Technology

NewsLocals in these cities really know how to make visitors feel at homeSharePhotograph: anaganeva / Shutterstock | People at a restaurant in Vila Nova de Gaia with Porto Old Town over the riverIf you’ve ever been rescued by a stranger while staring blankly at a metro map, you’ll know how much a friendly local can make a trip. Condé Nast Traveller has just revealed the friendliest cities in the world for 2026 as part of its annual Readers’ Choice Awards, and this year the top spot has gone to Melbourne. The rankings are voted for by readers, who are asked where in the world they’ve had the warmest welcome, whether that’s a local helping them decode a restaurant menu or pointing them in the right direction on the underground. Each city is then given a score out of 100.

Where in the world have you encountered the friendliest welcome? If you voted in Condé Nast Traveller’s Readers’ Choice Awards this year, your vote will have influenced the results below. These are the cities we turn to for the warmest hospitality, where we’ve encountered locals willing to help whether we’re struggling to navigate a neighbourhood restaurant’s menu or look perplexed en route from A to B on a new metro system. From laid-back hotspots Down Under to South Korea’s neon-hued capital, these are the friendliest cities in the world for 2026. Clifton Beach, Cape Town Getty Images10. Cape Town. Score 96.00Cape Town holds onto a position in the top ten – although it’s a slight tumble from third place in 2025. The colourful port city sits on the cusp between ocean shores and mountain ranges, so drift up by gentle cable car to the flat-topped peak of Table Mountain, or marvel at the penguin colonies on Boulders Beach. A traditional South African barbecue, or “braai”, is also essential to understanding the social culture here, where loved ones gather to share stories, laughter, and plenty of flame-grilled food. Dusk in Chinatown, Bangkok

Classic gems, tasteful customs, legendary supercars - for Silvian, they're all fair game. He's been in love with cars and motorcycles for as long as he can remember, so it made perfect sense to eventually turn that passion into a full-time writing career. Around six years and more than 3,000 articles later, he is still going strong and doesn't plan on hitting the brakes anytime soon. Argentina is a country known for its natural beauty, soccer legends, and chainsaw-wielding president, but it probably isn’t the first place you’d expect a rad V8 supercar to be developed. However, that assumption might change once you learn about a company called Valtor, the brainchild of engineer-turned-CEO Sergio Arias. He leads a small but ambitious team of designers and engineers like himself, who’d previously caught people’s attention with the Azor GT concept last year. Now they’re back at it once again with the Eaglon, an evolution of the Azor and something that could easily be mistaken for a Ferrari by those who don’t know their automotive lore.

There's currently some tension between the video game industry and the proliferation of AI tools. You can see the evidence of this in a recent development regarding the upcoming indie game Drunken Goddess Reflux. It's a game with the objective of imbibing alcohol until a demon vomits up her soul, a decidedly unique premise that would be hard for any AI to come up with. As spotted by Rock Paper Shotgun, though, the developers had to cancel an upcoming public demo session. The decision is partly due to concerns that AI could quickly clone it for someone else's financial benefit. Instead, they will hold closed sessions for a "limited number of participants. "