World Map of Peace
The most dangerous cities in the world
Port-au-Prince in Haiti had the highest homicide rate of any city in the world in 2025, followed by Babahoyo in Ecuador and Nelson Mandela Bay in South Africa. What the ranking measures, what it does not, and how Germany’s large cities compare
Key points at a glance
- According to the 2025 ranking by the Consejo Ciudadano, the most dangerous city in the world is Port-au-Prince in Haiti, with 197.43 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.
- On this page, dangerous means the highest homicide rate in the statistics. The figure says nothing about the people of a city and nothing about individual neighbourhoods.
- All 50 cities in the ranking are in the Americas and Africa, 17 of them in Mexico. No European city is among them.
- In Germany, the police recorded the most offences per inhabitant in Frankfurt am Main in 2025. Whether a trip is safe is answered by the travel and safety advice of the German Federal Foreign Office.
In numbers
197.43
homicides per 100,000 inhabitants
in Port-au-Prince, first place in the ranking
17 of 50
cities in the ranking
are in Mexico
9.97%
of homicides worldwide
in 50 cities with 0.89 percent of the world population
- 1. Port-au-Prince, Haiti197.43
- 2. Babahoyo, Ecuador166.02
- 3. Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa119
- 4. Machala, Ecuador116
- 5. Quevedo, Ecuador109
- 6. Culiacán, Mexico103.91
- 7. Manabí Centro, Ecuador103
- 8. Guayaquil, Ecuador91
- 9. Ciudad Obregón, Mexico90.81
- 10. Esmeraldas, Ecuador90
- Average of the 50 cities58.19
- Worldwide, estimated5.2
- Frankfurt am Main15,026
- Berlin13,642
- Bremen13,559
- Düsseldorf12,999
- Hanover12,849
- Halle (Saale)12,824
- Cologne12,727
- Magdeburg11,569
- Dortmund11,446
- Hamburg11,196
- Munich6,061
Consejo Ciudadano ranking
- Publisher
- Consejo Ciudadano para la Seguridad Pública y la Justicia Penal, Mexico
- What is counted
- Intentional homicides
- Which cities
- Cities with more than 300,000 inhabitants worldwide
- Result
- Homicides per 100,000 inhabitants
- What the figure does not show
- Robbery, theft and how safe people feel
Police Crime Statistics
- Publisher
- Federal Criminal Police Office, Wiesbaden
- What is counted
- All offences that become known to the police
- Which cities
- German cities with 100,000 inhabitants or more and state capitals
- Result
- Cases per 100,000 inhabitants, the frequency rate
- What the figure does not show
- Offences that nobody reports
- Data basis
- Ranking of the 50 cities with the highest homicide rate 2025, published in February 2026
- Publisher
- Consejo Ciudadano para la Seguridad Pública y la Justicia Penal, Mexico
- Compared
- Cities with more than 300,000 inhabitants
- How to read it
- Intentional homicides per 100,000 inhabitants
- Author
- Johannes Max Harms
Which is the most dangerous city in the world?
According to the 2025 ranking by the Mexican Consejo Ciudadano para la Seguridad Pública y la Justicia Penal, the most dangerous city in the world is Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. In 2025 there were 197.43 homicides there per 100,000 inhabitants. The city was already in first place the year before.
On this page, dangerous means the highest homicide rate in the statistics. The ranking compares how many people in a city were intentionally killed relative to its population. Such a rate is not a statement about the people who live there, nor about individual neighbourhoods.
According to the reporting on the study, Port-au-Prince's figure is the second highest in the history of the ranking. Only Juárez in Mexico was higher, in 2010, with 283.58 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. Haiti is also at the bottom of its region in the Global Peace Index.
Which cities follow in the next places?
Babahoyo in Ecuador is in second place with 166.02 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, Nelson Mandela Bay in South Africa is third with around 119. Six of the first ten places are held by cities and areas in Ecuador: Babahoyo, Machala, Quevedo, Manabí Centro, Guayaquil and Esmeraldas. From Mexico, Culiacán in sixth place and Ciudad Obregón in ninth are among the first ten.
According to the reporting, places 11 to 20 are held by Manzanillo, Zamora, Colima and Acapulco in Mexico, Cape Town in South Africa, Irapuato, Juárez and Tijuana in Mexico, Durban in South Africa and Palmira in Colombia. Further cities from Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and South Africa follow in the places behind.
The gaps are large. Between Port-au-Prince and Babahoyo there are just over 31 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, and the average of all 50 cities was 58.19. The report gives the estimated rate for the whole world as 5.2.
In which regions are the cities of the ranking?
44 of the 50 cities are in the Americas, six in Africa. No city from Europe, Asia or Oceania is included. Mexico has the most with 17 cities, followed by Colombia with eight, Ecuador with seven, Brazil and South Africa with six each and the US with three. Guatemala, Haiti and Trinidad and Tobago each have one city.
Together the 50 cities have 71.8 million inhabitants and, according to the report, recorded 41,802 homicides in 2025. This means that 0.89 percent of the world population accounted for 9.97 percent of all homicides worldwide.
The ranking counts homicides in cities, not deaths in wars. How violence in armed conflicts stands and which countries are least peaceful overall is shown on the page about the most dangerous countries in the world.
How does the report measure violence in a city?
The Consejo Ciudadano compares cities with more than 300,000 inhabitants by their homicide rate, meaning the number of intentional homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. The ranking is published together with the Comisión Mexicana de Derechos Humanos and Misión Rescate México. For Mexico, the report uses official figures from the statistics institute INEGI and the state prosecutors.
The rate says nothing about robbery, theft or how safe people feel. It also depends on how a city is defined. Manabí Centro in Ecuador, for example, is not a single city but an area made up of several municipalities.
The figures themselves are not equally reliable everywhere either. The publishers consider the official figures from Mexico for 2024 and 2025 possibly too low. Cities in countries without reliable statistics can be missing from the ranking altogether.
How is crime measured in large German cities?
In Germany, the Police Crime Statistics of the Federal Criminal Police Office count all offences that become known to the police. For cities with 100,000 inhabitants or more, they give the frequency rate, meaning the recorded cases per 100,000 inhabitants. In 2025 Frankfurt am Main was highest with 15,026 and Munich lowest with 6,061 among cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants.
Homicides are rare in these figures. Nationwide, the police recorded a total of 5,508,559 offences in 2025, including 2,453 cases of murder, manslaughter and killing on request. Three out of four of these cases were attempts. A homicide rate like the one in the global ranking cannot meaningfully be derived from this for German cities.
The frequency rate has limits. It only counts what is reported or detected. Offences are counted where they take place, but the figure only relates to the inhabitants. Where many commuters, visitors and travellers are about, it can therefore be higher without the risk for the people who live there being greater.
What does a high homicide rate say about a city?
It shows that, relative to its population, many people were killed in a city in one year. It does not show who was affected, why, or how the violence is distributed across individual neighbourhoods.
A ranking is therefore not a judgement about a city or its people. Hundreds of thousands of people live in each of these cities, go to work, raise children and hold their neighbourhoods together. Many of them work against violence themselves.
Why violence arises and how it ends again is explained on the pages Why is there war? and How wars ended. This page gives the figures of the 2025 ranking and the Police Crime Statistics 2025 and will be updated with the next editions.
Federal Criminal Police Office, guidelines for the Police Crime Statistics 2025, translated
The Police Crime Statistics are a compilation of all criminal matters that have become known to the police, limited to their recordable essential content.
Sources
German cities with the most recorded offences in 2025
| Rank | City | Offences per 100,000 inhabitants | Violent crime per 100,000 inhabitants |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Frankfurt am Main | 15,026 | 691 |
| 2 | Berlin | 13,642 | 537 |
| 3 | Bremen | 13,559 | 534 |
| 4 | Düsseldorf | 12,999 | 499 |
| 5 | Hanover | 12,849 | 622 |
| 6 | Halle (Saale) | 12,824 | 519 |
| 7 | Cologne | 12,727 | 539 |
| 8 | Magdeburg | 11,569 | 496 |
| 9 | Dortmund | 11,446 | 588 |
| 10 | Hamburg | 11,196 | 457 |
| 11 | Erfurt | 11,067 | 402 |
| 12 | Aachen | 10,726 | 340 |
| 13 | Leipzig | 10,722 | 402 |
| 14 | Duisburg | 10,395 | 443 |
| 15 | Münster | 10,069 | 372 |
| 16 | Kiel | 9,957 | 408 |
| 17 | Wuppertal | 9,885 | 506 |
| 18 | Mannheim | 9,813 | 324 |
| 19 | Freiburg im Breisgau | 9,631 | 347 |
| 20 | Chemnitz | 9,270 | 437 |
Source: Federal Criminal Police Office, Police Crime Statistics 2025, table of cities with 100,000 inhabitants or more. The 39 cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants are included. The frequency rate gives the cases known to the police per 100,000 inhabitants, calculated on the basis of the 2022 census. Violent crime includes robbery, aggravated assault and homicide offences, among others.
More in this series
- The safest cities in the worldSafe Cities Index 2021Copenhagen leads the Safe Cities Index 2021, just ahead of Toronto and Singapore. What the index measures, in which European cities people feel safest and where the police in Germany record the fewest offences
- The most dangerous countries in the worldGlobal Peace Index 2026Russia ranks last in the Global Peace Index 2026, followed by Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine and Israel. What the ranking says about the least safe countries in the world, and what it does not
More questions about the most dangerous cities
Which are the most dangerous cities in Europe?
The Consejo Ciudadano ranking 2025 contains no city from Europe, Asia or Oceania. All 50 cities are in the Americas and Africa. There is no comparable ranking of European cities by homicide rate; Eurostat publishes police-recorded homicide offences by country.
At country level, Lithuania with 2.63 and Latvia with 2.40 intentional homicide offences per 100,000 inhabitants had the highest figures in the EU in 2024, while Germany stood at 0.83. For comparison: in Port-au-Prince the figure was 197.43. Police statistics depend on national laws and recording rules, so these figures can only be compared to a limited extent. How peaceful the countries of Europe are overall is shown on the page about the safest countries.
What about large cities in Germany?
According to the Police Crime Statistics 2025, Frankfurt am Main had the highest frequency rate among cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants: 15,026 recorded offences per 100,000 inhabitants. It is followed by Berlin with 13,642, Bremen with 13,559, Düsseldorf with 12,999 and Hanover with 12,849. Frankfurt also had the highest rate of violent crime, with 691 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
The frequency rate counts all offences, including theft, fraud and fare dodging. It is therefore not a measure of how dangerous everyday life is for the people who live there. The table below shows the 20 large cities with the highest figures. All 39 large cities with violent crime and the change on the previous year are on the page The most dangerous cities in Germany.
Which are the most dangerous cities in the US?
Three US cities appear in the 2025 ranking: New Orleans in 41st place, Cleveland in 43rd and Memphis in 46th. Their homicide rates are therefore far below those at the top of the list.
The ranking only compares cities with more than 300,000 inhabitants. Smaller cities with high rates are not included, and the way a city is defined, as the core city or the wider metropolitan area, changes the rate.
Which city in Africa has the highest homicide rate?
In Africa, Nelson Mandela Bay in South Africa ranks highest, in third place with around 119 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. Six of the 50 cities are in South Africa, including Cape Town in 15th place and Durban in 19th.
All six African cities on the list are in South Africa. The ranking can only compare cities for which figures are available, so cities in countries without reliable statistics are missing.
Which cities should you avoid?
This page does not give travel advice. A homicide rate describes a whole city over a year and says little about what makes a particular trip risky today. It also does not show how violence is distributed across individual neighbourhoods.
For every country, the German Federal Foreign Office publishes travel and safety advice, including for individual regions and cities. This advice is updated continuously and is the reliable basis for your decision.
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