Kassel at the top: Germany's happiest city in 2025!

Kassel at the top: Germany's happiest city in 2025!

Kassel is at the top of the list of the happiest cities in Germany. According to the current happiness atlas of the South German Class Lottery (SKL), which conducted a comprehensive survey of 23,468 citizens, the people of Kassel score an impressive 7.44 points in life satisfaction on a scale of 0 to 10. This is the second year in a row that Kassel has taken the top position, as Welt reports.

Krefeld follows in second and third place with 7.39 points and Düsseldorf with 7.36 points. However, the ranking has changed compared to last year, as Erfurt and Aachen fell from second and third place to fifth and sixth place. After all, Rostock still has the lowest life satisfaction with just 6.08 points and is 1.36 points behind the lucky Kassel.

Life satisfaction and city size

An interesting aspect of the survey is the clear trend that life satisfaction tends to decrease in larger cities. The survey shows that only two of the largest German cities, namely Düsseldorf and Hamburg, are represented among the ten happiest cities. Munich, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin only come in 27th, 35th and 37th place in terms of life satisfaction. SKL emphasizes that cities like Kassel, which offer a young, student-oriented environment and lots of greenery, actually have a higher quality of life.

The difference between subjective life satisfaction and objective quality of life is remarkable. Karlsruhe takes first place in terms of external living conditions, but only reaches 38th place in subjective life satisfaction. On a positive note, the general level of satisfaction in Germany has increased compared to the previous year, which is due to the inclusion of data from the Corona year 2021.

The top ten lucky cities

• Kassel – 7,44 Punkte
• Krefeld – 7,39 Punkte
• Düsseldorf – 7,36 Punkte
• Augsburg – 7,33 Punkte
• Aachen – 7,33 Punkte
• Münster – 7,24 Punkte
• Hamburg – 7,21 Punkte
• Erfurt – 7,27 Punkte
• Mönchengladbach – 7,22 Punkte
• Duisburg – 7,20 Punkte

As Zeit further explains, the survey shows that smaller cities are often attributed unexpected advantages, such as attractive leisure activities and smaller, family-friendly structures. These conditions are what make people feel truly happy in their city, even when the objective data says otherwise.

Overall, it can be said that life satisfaction continues to be an indispensable measure of the attractiveness of cities. Kassel has obviously shown a good hand when it comes to quality of life, which makes it an interesting place to live in the long term.