Hamburg has the highest life satisfaction: Happiness Atlas 2025 confirmed!

Hamburg has the highest life satisfaction: Happiness Atlas 2025 confirmed!

A look at the Happiness Atlas 2025 shows: Hamburg once again tops the list of the happiest federal states. The survey, which was carried out by the University of Freiburg in cooperation with the South German Class Lottery, shows that Hanseatic citizens rate their life satisfaction with an average of 7.33 points. This puts Hamburg at the top of the ranking, followed by Bavaria, Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia, which also achieved high values. Compared to the previous year, satisfaction in Hamburg has fallen slightly, but the city remains number one in Germany. Deutschlandfunk reports that the overall score in Germany has risen to 7.09 points, which can be attributed to positive developments, particularly in the eastern German federal states.

Thanks to a variety of factors that contribute to happiness in Hamburg, the city remains unchallenged in the Happiness Atlas. The young population, high incomes and good education and health care ensure that the quality of life remains high. Despite a small decrease of 0.08 points since last year, the survey shows that the majority of Hamburg residents are very satisfied with their lives. In comparison, other federal states such as Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony experienced small changes in satisfaction, with Schleswig-Holstein falling from third to fifth place. NDR highlights that over 48% of Germans are highly satisfied, while the values ​​in the eastern federal states are partially increasing.

Significant differences between the federal states

What is particularly noteworthy is the large gap between Hamburg and bottom-placed Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, which ranks in the table with just 6.06 points. There is a continuous decline in satisfaction, which primarily affects men over 60 and single people. Die Zeit reports that this decline is primarily due to the country's economic and social challenges. The differences within Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania are also striking: the residents of Western Pomerania rate their lives with 6.75 points, while Mecklenburg only scores 5.88 points.

Parallel to Hamburg's high flights, there are interesting developments in other federal states. Lower Saxony recorded a slight increase to 7.10 points, and Schleswig-Holstein unfortunately fell to fifth place after being in third place in 2024. After all, satisfaction in Schleswig-Holstein is still a respectable 7.12 points. The stability of overall satisfaction in Germany underlines that Germans overall enjoy a high level of life satisfaction, with 48% reporting that they are very satisfied with scores between 8 and 10 points.

Survey details and conclusions

The extensive survey, which took place from July 2024 to June 2025, was carried out among around 19,000 people, with the Allensbach Institute for Demoscopy providing valuable data. These results make it clear that satisfaction is not just a snapshot, but a continuous process that is influenced by many external and internal factors. With the positive trend in most western German federal states, one can look forward to the coming years with optimism.

Overall, the Happiness Atlas 2025 shows that there is a lot of reason for happiness in Germany - even if not everything is rosy. The differences between the federal states are a clear sign of where there is an urgent need for action to further improve the quality of life for all citizens.