Where Wi-Fi, weather and visas all line up
10 of the Best Cities for Digital Nomads
Nomad List, Forbes and pretty much every remote-work blog converges on the same shortlist — these are the cities currently winning the wandering-laptop economy.
A 'digital nomad city' is just a regular city with good Wi-Fi, affordable rent, a flexible visa, a coffee shop scene and a critical mass of other remote workers. Surprisingly few places hit all five.
How we chose these ↓ — jump to the full scoring system at the bottom of the article.
Prague, Czechia · pop. 1,275,406
Prague's combination of full Schengen access, very cheap beer (and broader cost of living), and big-city infrastructure keeps it on every European nomad shortlist. The Czech Republic's Zivno (Živnostenský) trade-license visa is the most common nomad route.
The city's compact and walkable historic core makes it especially attractive for laptop-and-train nomads who want easy access to the rest of Europe. See also our best-preserved old towns list.
Budapest, Hungary · pop. 1,686,222
Budapest's 'White Card' digital-nomad residence permit, launched in 2022, allows one-year stays with up to one year of renewal. Low costs, fast internet, the Buda hills, thermal baths and a serious café scene make it one of the most popular Central European nomad bases.
The city also features on our best-preserved old towns list.
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam · pop. 14,002,598
Saigon's fast 5G (Vietnam has some of Asia's better mobile-internet speeds), sub-$1 coffee and rapidly growing co-working scene across District 1 and Thao Dien have moved it into every nomad ranking in the past three years.
Vietnam's e-visa is straightforward for most nationalities and now allows 90-day stays with multiple entries. The city is also one of the most sea-level-vulnerable megacities — see our cities at risk from rising seas list.
Antioquia, Colombia · pop. 2,441,123
Medellín's famous 'eternal spring' climate (a steady 22°C year-round, thanks to its 1,495 m elevation) and the El Poblado and Laureles neighbourhoods make it the Western Hemisphere's busiest nomad hub after Mexico City.
Colombia's digital-nomad visa, launched in 2023, allows up to two years of stay. The city's continued reputation in some quarters as dangerous is largely out of date for the central tourist neighbourhoods, but does drive home insurance and security pricing for residents.
Harju, Estonia · pop. 462,120
Estonia invented the digital-nomad visa concept in 2020, and Tallinn's e-residency programme lets foreigners actually run an EU-incorporated business remotely without ever physically relocating. The city's compact UNESCO-inscribed Old Town is a short walk from a dense network of co-working spaces.
The combination of Schengen access, fast government services and low corporate tax has made Estonia one of the most-considered options for serious nomad entrepreneurs. See also our oldest continuously inhabited and best-preserved old towns lists.
Catalonia, Spain · pop. 1,713,247
Barcelona pairs Spain's digital-nomad visa (introduced under the 2022 Startups Law) with the kind of city most nomads would already pay to visit. The visa allows 12-month initial stays with reduced income tax under the Beckham Law.
The city's anti-overtourism and anti-short-let political shift means that finding long-term rentals is harder than it was, but the underlying appeal — climate, food, beaches, Modernisme architecture — hasn't changed.
Bali, Indonesia · pop. 788,445
Bali (administratively reached via Denpasar) is the warm-weather nomad classic. Canggu and Ubud are basically self-organising remote-work villages, with hundreds of co-working spaces, surf schools and yoga studios catering specifically to laptop migrants.
Indonesia's E33G remote-worker visa, launched in 2024, gives 1-year stays with tax exemption on foreign-sourced income. The island's traffic and waste-management problems have grown faster than its infrastructure can absorb.
Mexico City, Mexico · pop. 9,209,944
Mexico City's Roma, Condesa and Polanco neighbourhoods are full of co-working spaces, third-wave coffee, and one of the better restaurant scenes in the Americas. US and Canadian passport-holders get a 180-day tourist stamp on arrival, which makes the city effectively a no-friction nomad destination.
The influx has driven rents in Roma and Condesa substantially higher and become a local political issue, but the city remains very affordable compared with Western Europe or the US. See also our highest-altitude cities list.
Chiang Mai, Thailand · pop. 127,240
Chiang Mai was the original 'nomad capital,' anchored by the Nimmanhaemin district's wall-to-wall cafés, fast fibre internet, very low rents, and a year-round community of laptop workers. The Thai DTV visa launched in mid-2024 formalised an arrangement that had been informal for over a decade.
The city's smoke season (February–April) and seasonal monsoons are the only major downsides. Most nomads pair Chiang Mai with a beach base further south.
Lisbon, Portugal · pop. 552,700
Portugal's D8 digital-nomad visa, launched in 2022, combined with Lisbon's mild Atlantic climate, café culture and seafood, made the city the unofficial capital of European nomadism. Nomad List has ranked it #1 for most quarters since 2022.
Rising rents driven partly by remote-worker demand have become a political issue, and the Portuguese government has begun winding back parts of the Non-Habitual Resident tax regime that originally attracted many foreigners. The city still tops most nomad rankings even so.
How we chose these
We synthesised Nomad List's crowdsourced rankings (which weight Wi-Fi speed, cost of living, safety, weather and community), Henley & Partners' Digital Nomad Visa Index (which weights visa accessibility, tax treatment and stay length), and on-the-ground reporting from Forbes, Wired and Bloomberg's CityLab. Cities that have a formal nomad visa and that consistently rank in the top 20 on Nomad List are included here. The fastest-changing dimension is visa policy — over 60 countries now offer some form of nomad visa, up from roughly 5 in 2020.
Sources & further reading
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For entertainment only. Rankings on this page are editorial picks compiled from public sources for fun and discovery — they aren't a scientific measurement. Population figures and place details come from open data; see the linked place pages for sources.