Best countries for trans people: what the rights maps show

There is no single best country for trans people, because the best-known rankings measure laws, not daily life. In their 2026 editions, both published on 12 May, ILGA-Europe's Rainbow Map put Spain first and TGEU's Trans Rights Index put Iceland first. The Rainbow Map covers 49 European countries; TGEU's index adds five in Central Asia. This page explains what each index measures and how, what the rankings leave out (everyday safety, healthcare and differences inside a country), and how to read one for your own situation. It is not advice to move anywhere.

What ILGA-Europe's Rainbow Map scores

ILGA-Europe has produced the Rainbow Map since 2009 and publishes it each year in the week of 17 May, the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, Biphobia and Intersexphobia. It scores 49 European countries from 0%, for gross violations of human rights, to 100%, for full equality.

The score comes from 76 criteria in seven weighted categories: equality and non-discrimination (23%), hate crime and hate speech (19%), family (17.5%), legal gender recognition (17.5%), civil society space (9%), asylum (9%) and intersex bodily integrity (5%). Legal gender recognition, the category written most directly about trans people, has criteria of its own for name changes, self-determination and recognition of non-binary people, and for whether a diagnosis, surgery, sterilisation or divorce is required.

In 2026 Spain reached the top for the first time, with 89%, replacing Malta after ten years in the lead. Malta scored 88%, Iceland 86%, and Belgium and Denmark 85% each. ILGA-Europe credits Spain partly with fully implementing the depathologisation of trans people in its healthcare system. Slovakia moved the other way, falling two places to 35th after constitutional amendments which, ILGA-Europe says, mean trans people there can no longer change their gender markers.

ILGA-Europe is clear about the limits of its own ranking. It calls the idea that higher-ranked countries are LGBTI-friendly holiday destinations false, says the ranking does not show which countries are safest, and states that the map "does not give information about societal acceptance of LGBTI people, or the general safety of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people".

What TGEU's Trans Rights Index scores

TGEU (Trans Europe and Central Asia) has tracked trans-specific law since 2013 and added Central Asia in 2019. Its Trans Rights Index & Map now covers 54 countries, 49 in Europe and 5 in Central Asia, and TGEU releases an update every year for the same international day in May. Where the Rainbow Map covers all LGBTI people, this index is only about trans people.

It awards points on 32 indicators in six categories: legal gender recognition, asylum, hate crime and hate speech, non-discrimination, health, and family. The detail matters. A recognition procedure based on self-determination earns a point, for instance, and a country misses out on a further point if that procedure is only open to adults.

In the 2026 index, Iceland met 30 of the 32 indicators, Malta 28 and Spain 27.18, according to PinkNews's report on the results. Russia met none. The same report gives TGEU's count of 38 countries out of 54 with legal or administrative measures that make legal gender recognition available. TGEU calls Slovakia the fifth country in the region with a de facto ban on recognition, and notes that Belarus halted it in 2026, reinstating compulsory medical requirements.

Much of the year's progress, TGEU says, came from courts and activists rather than governments. A Constitutional Court ruling in Czechia led to new guidelines for recognition without compulsory sterilisation or surgery, though TGEU warns they are not fully written into law and could be rolled back. In Austria a Constitutional Court ruling widened non-binary gender markers beyond intersex people, and in Poland a court ended the requirement for trans people to sue their parents to be recognised.

TGEU is as frank as ILGA-Europe about what a score can hold. Its scores, it says, "are based solely on legal text", and it does not take into account "the social atmosphere or other factors that may impact how laws are applied".

Why the maps disagree, and the indexes beyond Europe

Spain first on one list and Iceland first on the other is not a contradiction. The Rainbow Map weighs family law, civil society and intersex protections alongside trans-specific law, while TGEU's index looks only at trans people and gives health a category of its own. Different questions produce different winners, which is a good reason to read both rather than pick the headline you like.

Neither covers the rest of the world. Three other sources are often quoted, and each measures something different:

• Equaldex's Equality Index averages two scores: a Legal Index built from 13 issues, transgender rights among them, and a Public Opinion Index built from surveys and polls, with older surveys counting for less. Public opinion data is not available everywhere, and the figures change as new data comes in. When we checked in September 2026, Iceland led with 93, followed by Norway and Uruguay, with Chile and New Zealand also in the top ten.
• The Williams Institute's Global Acceptance Index, from UCLA, measures social acceptance of LGBTI people rather than law, using survey data from 175 countries and locations. Published in November 2021, the edition we found draws on surveys from 1981 to 2020 and puts Iceland, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden and Canada at the top. It added surveys about trans and intersex people, but its newest data is now several years old.
• ILGA World's database gives each of the 193 UN member states, and 47 non-independent territories, a profile of its laws across 18 legal categories, legal gender recognition among them. It is the place to check a country the European maps leave out.

Travel rankings and lists of the most friendly countries make up much of what a search turns up. Before trusting one, look for the same things you would look for in the two maps: who made it, what it counts, and when.

What the rankings miss: everyday safety

Both map-makers say it themselves: they score laws. For what happens on the street, the evidence comes from asking people. In Europe, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) does this with a large survey of LGBTIQ people. Its third round was answered online by 100,577 people aged 15 and over, between June and August 2023, in the 27 EU countries plus Albania, North Macedonia and Serbia, and the results were published on 14 May 2024.

The trans figures make hard reading. In the year before the survey, 77% of trans women, 72% of trans men and 66% of non-binary respondents had been harassed because they are LGBTIQ. Over the previous five years, 29% of trans women and 23% of trans men had been physically or sexually attacked for the same reason.

Countries differ, and FRA describes the differences between them as huge. Across all LGBTIQ respondents, harassment in the past year ranged from 40% in Sweden to 63% in Czechia and North Macedonia. Even the lowest rate in the survey means four in ten people harassed in a single year, in a country that sits in the Rainbow Map's top ten.

FRA's survey only covers the 30 countries it ran in. Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and the UK are not among them, so for some of the countries at the top of the rankings there is no comparable measure of daily life at all.

TGEU puts the gap plainly in its 2026 report: legal developments do not automatically translate into safety, dignity or access to rights, and even where laws improve, implementation is often partial, inconsistent or out of reach.

What the rankings miss: getting healthcare

A law that allows legal recognition says nothing about the waiting list for a clinic, or the receptionist who reads out your old name. FRA's survey asked about that too. In the year before it, 40% of trans men and 39% of trans women said they had been discriminated against by healthcare or social services staff, against 13% of cis women and 10% of cis men. Almost one in five trans women (18%) and trans men (17%) had gone without medical treatment they needed for fear of discrimination, and one in seven trans women said they had been refused treatment.

Waiting times rarely appear on any map. Public Health Scotland reported that on 31 March 2026, 6,435 people were waiting for a first appointment at NHS gender identity clinics in Scotland, and that 1,146 of them, 17.8%, had been waiting more than five years. Over the year 2025/26, 413 people had a first appointment.

TGEU's health category captures part of this, because it scores what the law says about trans healthcare. A score built from legal text cannot show how long the queue is, how far away the nearest clinic sits, or whether staff treat you as who you are, which is the everyday side of gender-affirming care. Those are questions for people who live there.

What the rankings miss: differences inside a country

A national score flattens places that can be very different. In the United States, which neither European map covers, the gap is stark. The Movement Advancement Project tracks more than 50 LGBTQ-related laws and policies state by state and updates its maps as legislatures act. When we checked in September 2026, it gave 16 states and Washington, D.C. a high gender identity policy score, and 23 states and 3 territories a negative one. By its count, 40% of LGBTQ people aged 13 and over live in states with a high score for gender identity, and 42% in states with a negative one.

Nothing that sharp shows up on a European map, where each country gets one number, but the same logic applies on a smaller scale. A capital with a support group and a clinic is a different place from a town two hours away, whatever the national score says. Dating in a small town covers one side of that.

How to read a map for your own situation

None of this makes the maps useless. They are good at one thing, showing which governments have written protection into law and which have taken it out, and that is worth knowing before you travel, apply for documents or plan anything. A few habits help:

• Check the date. Both indexes are updated once a year, in May, and laws can change within weeks. ILGA-Europe also updates the Rainbow Map website through the year, so the live map can be newer than the headline ranking.
• Go to the category that affects you. If your documents are the problem, the legal gender recognition criteria matter more than the overall rank; gender markers are a separate fight from anything social or medical. For care, look at health, and for protection, at asylum.
• Read the words behind the number. ILGA-Europe's Annual Review gives the story behind each country's points, and TGEU's map shows which requirements apply in each country.
• Ask people who live there. A local group knows which clinic has a queue and which bar is friendly; finding a trans support group is a good start, wherever you are.
• Where the law is hostile, think about your phone as well as the law. Hiding dating apps on your phone covers what a search can find, and why hiding an icon is not enough.

T4TSpace is a dating app by and for trans and non-binary people, open in the browser while its native apps are being built. For our own approach, see our safety page and where the app is offered, and why.