Where's the real 'best place' to retire? Tips to making those lists work for you.

By Richard Eisenberg

More retirees feel forced to move, due to high costs and politics

Retirement in Greece has been described as "surprisingly attainable."

If there was ever a time when people approaching, or starting, retirement might think about relocating, this could be it.

Many Americans in their 50s, 60s and 70s seeing double-digit increases in property taxes and homeowners' insurance premiums in recent years also have decades of home-equity growth, so moving to a less expensive part of the U.S. could be advantageous and possible.

Others are planning to leave the U.S. for a less fraught political environment. "In conversations with our readers, they've changed from dreamers to do-ers," said Kathleen Peddicord, publisher of Live and Invest Overseas. "It's gone beyond political to exhaustion. 'I'm just worn out. I'm tired of all this. I just want out.'"

Regardless of the reason, statistics show retirees have taken relocating seriously in recent years.

A 2025 report from the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies found that 37% of retirees moved to a new home upon entering retirement. Social Security Administration data showed a 47% increase in people receiving Social Security benefits abroad since 2020, and a February 2025 Harris Poll said 26% of boomers have considered retiring abroad within two years.

An AARP survey of Americans 50 and over found that "half of people lack confidence that their community will have what they need as they age," said Rodney Harrell, vice president for family, home and community at AARP.

No surprise, then, that there are now so many lists dedicated to helping people find the "best places" to retire.

Read: How we live an upscale lifestyle abroad on a Social Security budget

Several lists for 2026 just came out, citing top locations in the United States and abroad. AARP also produced its Top 100 Places to Live for Older Adults. The U.S. winners range from small cities such as Cape Coral, Fla., to major metropolises like San Francisco; many are tax havens. The international lists anointed Greece and Boquete, Panama, a small community with a large expat population.

I studied these lists and spoke to some of their creators to learn why the winners won, why the lists are so different and how to best pick a retirement location.

The upshot: None of the "best" places on the lists are best for everything.

For example, the ranking of 100 U.S. metro areas from Storage Café (an online marketplace for self-storage units) named the New York City area No. 2, largely due to its healthcare and arts, even though the area had the highest cost of living in the list's Top 10. "Nobody made an A+ across all the catalysts," said Doug Ressler, senior research officer at Storage Café's sister division Yardi Matrix.

Housing affordability is a challenge for retirees in many big U.S. cities, said Harrell, architect of AARP's list. "Our index punishes places for that," he noted. Small and medium-sized communities, he said, sometimes lack many top-quality hospitals and doctors.

Before blithely accepting the choices of any best places to retire list, you'll want to study its methodology to understand four essential components: which places were analyzed and which weren't; which data factors were included and which weren't; how much weight the list gave to factors it measured; and whether the researchers' subjective views are factored into rankings.

Read: My wife moved to Mexico. Can she still get Social Security survivor benefits when I die?

You may find that places interesting to you were deemed too big or small to be included. Or certain factors that matter to you were ignored while ones that don't were weighed heavily. As you'll soon see, some lists included unusual data points or left out important measures such as the quality of healthcare or the area's economy.

Here's a rundown of the six best-places lists in the U.S. and the two global ones:

Best places to retire in the U.S.

U.S. News 2026 Best Places to Retire: For this list, researchers analyzed 850 cities and whittled them down to 250 - up from 150 a year ago - to choose the Top 10, most of which were small cities. "Expanding the rankings enables readers to look beyond major metropolitan areas, discovering small and mid-size cities that may appeal to them as retirement destinations," said Tim Smart, a U.S. News contributing editor. The No. 1 place is in Michigan, three in the top 10 are in Florida and two are in Texas.

Read: This New England state is the best place to retire

In addition to looking at the key factors it always reviews, this year U.S. News also included a city's 55-and-over population percentage and the pattern of people of that age moving there.

WalletHub Best and Worst States to Retire (2026): WalletHub evaluated the 50 states across 46 measures, giving extra weight to their cost of living, share of population aged 65 and older and, if they had it, mild weather. Oddly, bingo halls per capita was a data point, too.

Its winners tended to be low-cost mountain states. Wyoming was No. 1 largely because of its low cost of living, no estate or inheritance taxes and a low violent-crime rate. But it ranked just 33rd for healthcare (which includes things like top-rated geriatrics hospitals and family physicians per capita). Not in the Top 10: California, Arizona, Texas or New York.

Investopedia Best 100 US Cities for Retirees in 2026: Researchers compared 565 cities to choose its Top 100, giving the most weight to cost of living. But Investopedia did not rank the cities. Weather was not included in the list's methodology description, though the likelihood of an environmental disaster and air quality were.

Investopedia's best cities, mostly small and medium-sized, are in 17 states, with 21 in Florida and 15 in Pennsylvania.

Read: These surprising states rank first and worst for retirees

CareScout Best and Worst States to Retire 2026: CareScout is a company that helps families find quality long-term care and its list reflects that.

Like other rankings, CareScout compared affordability, quality of life and healthcare. But unlike others, it also looked at a state's Medicaid long-term-care spending for residents 65 and over (Washington, D.C., which was included, was No. 1 for this) and the rate of Medicare beneficiaries having three or more chronic conditions (lower rates were preferable, making Wyoming best). The methodology didn't mention any assessment of the quality of healthcare, though. Most of CareScout's Top 10 are rural mountain and New England states. Not making the cut: Arizona, California or Texas.

Storage Café Best Places to Retire: This list analyzed 100 of the nation's largest metro areas to choose what it calls the top ones "for golden-year quality of life."

Storage Café included a quirky data point echoing its company's business focus, self-storage facilities. More than half the list's top metro areas feature self-storage costs below the national average (best deal: No. 10 Boise, Idaho's, $100 per unit).

Unlike other lists, this one also compared the availability of age-restricted or "senior-friendly" communities. "That's one of the big things a lot of retirees really like," Ressler said. The quality of healthcare wasn't factored into the ranking, he said, because that's "highly subjective."

The Top 10 includes big, medium-sized and small metro areas, mostly up and down the East Coast. Four are in Florida - because the state has no income tax, good weather and many retirees, Ressler said.

AARP's Top 100 Places to Live for Older Adults: While technically not a best places to retire list, AARP's Livability Index comes close. "It measures all ages and specifically includes the things that older adults need," Harrell said.

AARP's livability list evaluates neighborhoods, cities, counties and states in standard categories as well as a couple of unique ones: engagement (including opportunity for civic involvement, social involvement and venues for arts and sports) and opportunity (measuring things like income inequality, age diversity and jobs per worker).

All of AARP's categories get equal weighting. "I don't want to tell somebody that housing affordability is two and a half times as important as transportation," Harrell said.

Unlike other lists, AARP compares communities against others of the same size: very large (population of 500,000+); large (100,000 to 499,999); midsize (25,000 to 99,999) and "great places to get to know your neighbors" (5,000 to 24,999). There are 25 winners in each - none are in Arizona, Florida, or Texas.

"The highest scores come from some of the smaller places," Harrell said.

One useful feature: You can personalize the list to adjust the scoring and weighting based on matters to you and can compare neighborhoods within a city or in different cities.

Read: Thinking about retiring abroad? Here are 6 reasons to stay in America

Best places to retire around the world

International Living Best Places to Retire in 2026: This list combined data with expertise from International Living correspondents to rank 24 countries on housing; visa/retiree benefits; cost of living; development and governance (infrastructure, internet, political environment, banking system); climate (number of climate options); healthcare; and an affinity rating.

The affinity rating is based on whether International Living experts would be happy to move there, the size of the expat community, whether English is widely spoken, the ability to have a thriving social life and where readers would like to move.

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02-07-26 1458ET