Which Countries Have the Best Hospitals? (2026 Rankings)

What the 2026 ranking covers

Newsweek's methodology describes a ranking built with the research firm Statista, using data from calendar year 2025. The key facts:

The 32 countries are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Notice who isn't there. In Latin America, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico are included, but Argentina and Costa Rica are not. Hospitals in countries outside the 32 weren't assessed, so their absence says nothing about their quality.

How hospitals are scored

Newsweek says tens of thousands of medical experts across the 32 countries took part in the survey. Together, peer recommendations make up 35% of the score, so reputation among doctors carries a lot of weight. Patient-reported outcomes count for 6.5%, and the PROMs component scores whether a hospital collects them rather than how good its results are.

For how this approach compares with US-focused rankings, see our breakdown of Newsweek vs U.S. News and national lists.

Which countries come out on top?

Read country tallies with care. In the national lists that sit beneath the global ranking, the US has by far the most ranked hospitals, at 420. Israel and Singapore have 10 each. That gap mostly reflects how many hospitals each country has and how many were assessed. It isn't a quality ratio.

In the global top 50 published on the ranking page, US hospitals form the largest single-country group by our count, with Germany next among the countries we tallied. The highest-placed Latin American hospital in the top 50 is in Brazil, at 16th.

Size effects are easy to underestimate. A country with hundreds of large hospitals has many more candidates for a top-250 list than a small country with a handful, even if the average quality of their hospitals were identical. That's why a tally of entries is better read as "where highly rated hospitals can be found" than as "which country's hospitals are best on average". A small country with a few listed hospitals may still offer excellent care in those hospitals.

So the honest answer to "which countries have the best hospitals?" is:

• Among the 32 countries assessed, the US and Germany contribute the most hospitals to the published top 50, by our count.
• Large countries with many hospitals naturally contribute more entries.
• Countries outside the 32 weren't measured at all.

The caveats Newsweek itself spells out

The methodology is unusually direct about the ranking's limits, and every reader should know them:

1. Scores can't be compared between countries. Each country uses different patient-experience and quality data, so a score of 90 in one country and 87 in another doesn't mean the first hospital is better.
2. Specialised hospitals are excluded from the global list. A top cancer, heart or orthopaedic hospital may not appear even if it's excellent in its field.
3. It reflects 2025 data. Things can change.
4. It shouldn't be your only source. Newsweek advises checking other information, or visiting the facility.
5. Absence isn't a judgement. Hospitals that aren't listed aren't implied to be worse.

A small inconsistency is worth noting too: the page calls this the eighth year of the ranking in one place and the seventh edition in another.

Hospital rankings vs health system rankings

A country can have world-class hospitals and still have a system that performs poorly overall, and the reverse is possible too. Health system rankings look at access, cost, equity and population health across everyone. The Commonwealth Fund's Mirror, Mirror 2024, for example, ranked the US last overall among 10 high-income countries, even though the US dominates Newsweek's hospital tallies. Both can be true. Excellent hospitals don't guarantee that everyone can reach them or afford them.

For system-level comparisons, see the best healthcare systems in 2026.

How to use the list if you're considering treatment abroad

A ranking is a starting point. If you're looking at a hospital in Colombia or anywhere else:

1. Check whether it appears in that country's national list, and compare it only with other hospitals in the same country.
2. Look at accreditation separately. Rankings and accreditation measure different things. Our map of JCI accreditation by country covers the accreditation side.
3. Ask about your procedure. A hospital that ranks well overall may not be the strongest in the specialty you need. Ask how many of your procedures it performs each year.
4. Ask for its own quality data: infection rates, readmissions and complication rates, if it publishes them.
5. Check the surgeon, not just the building.

What inclusion means for Colombia

Colombia's inclusion means its hospitals were assessed and ranked against other Colombian hospitals using the same methodology. That's useful in two ways. It gives patients a national shortlist built from peer recommendations, patient experience and quality data. And it allows a rough sense of whether a hospital's peers rate it highly within the Colombian system.

What inclusion doesn't do is put Colombian hospitals on the same scale as American or German ones. Because Newsweek says scores aren't comparable between countries, the only valid comparison is within Colombia. A hospital that ranks near the top of the Colombian list is well regarded in Colombia, by Colombian measures.

What no hospital ranking can see

Even a well-designed ranking leaves out things that matter to a patient travelling for treatment:

• Your surgeon. Rankings score institutions, not the individual who operates on you.
• Your procedure. A hospital's overall score may reflect strengths in departments you'll never use.
• Price and what's included. Rankings don't consider cost or how clearly it's quoted.
• Support for international patients. Language support, coordination with your doctors at home and help after discharge aren't scored.
• Recent changes. The 2026 list reflects 2025 data. Staff, ownership and services can change.

Our guide to reading a hospital's quality report covers how to get at some of these directly.