Edmonton ranks ninth out of Canada's ten largest cities for happiness.
The city scored 67.7 out of 100 in Leger's 2026 Happiness Index, ahead of only Winnipeg at 67.2 and below the national average of 70.5.
Edmonton's score improved, rising 1.4 points from 66.3 last year. But several cities ahead of it recorded larger gains, pushing Edmonton from seventh place in 2025 to ninth in 2026.
The full ranking
Montreal — 72.7, up 3.3
Brampton — 71.7, up 5.0
Toronto — 69.4, up 3.6
Vancouver — 69.0, up 2.7
Hamilton — 68.7, up 1.2
Mississauga — 68.7, down 1.6
Calgary — 68.6, up 1.2
Ottawa — 68.3, up 1.9
Edmonton — 67.7, up 1.4
Winnipeg — 67.2, up 1.3
Canada's national average rose 1.8 points to 70.5, leaving Edmonton 2.8 points below it.
Edmonton got happier and fell further behind Canada
This is the part that explains how a city improves and still drops.
In 2025, Edmonton sat 2.4 points below the national average. In 2026 that gap widened to 2.8, because the country's score rose faster than Edmonton's did.
The bottom half is tighter than it looks
Ninth place sounds worse than the numbers are.
Only one point separates Edmonton at 67.7 from Hamilton in fifth at 68.7. Calgary is 0.9 points ahead. Winnipeg trails by half a point.
Six cities are packed between 67.2 and 68.7. Small movements in either direction reshuffle most of the bottom half.
Mississauga was the only city to decline
Last year's winner fell 1.6 points, from 70.3 to 68.7, dropping from first place to sixth.
Montreal displaced it at the top with the second-largest gain in the table. Brampton posted the largest at 5.0 points.
Edmonton gained more than Calgary, but both fell in the ranking
Calgary scored 68.6, up 1.2 points from 67.4. Edmonton gained slightly more, rising 1.4 points to 67.7, which narrowed the gap between the two cities from 1.1 points to 0.9.
Both cities nevertheless fell as others posted larger gains. Calgary dropped from fourth to seventh, while Edmonton moved from seventh to ninth.
Alberta as a province ranked eighth at 68.5, up from 68.0. Quebec leads for the second straight year at 74.5, followed by Newfoundland and Labrador at 71.0 and New Brunswick at 70.3.
Manitoba posted the largest provincial gain at 2.6 points, followed by Ontario at 2.4 and Quebec at 2.1. Nova Scotia was the only province to decline.
What Canadians said makes a city happy
Three answers came up most often.
Safety and security, cited by 46 per cent of respondents.
Access to green spaces, parks and nature, at 40 per cent.
Quality of neighbourhood life, at 27 per cent.
Edmonton's low position is notable given the city's extensive River Valley park system, one of the largest urban park networks in North America. Leger's published city ranking doesn't break Edmonton's score down by individual factor, so the results don't reveal what specifically kept the city near the bottom.
And what puts happiness under pressure
Cost of living, at 58 per cent, well ahead of anything else. Financial pressure broadly, including housing, debt, income and financial security, was cited by 57 per cent.
Physical health at 32 per cent.
Mental health and uncertainty about the future at 23 per cent each.
Edmonton's housing remains comparatively affordable
When Zoocasa compared Leger's 2025 scores against average home prices, dividing price by happiness score, Edmonton came out at roughly $6,289 per happiness point, second cheapest among Canada's largest cities behind Winnipeg. Calgary was $8,425.
The comparison doesn't establish that lower housing prices cause greater happiness, and it uses last year's data. It does show that Edmonton delivered one of the lowest housing-cost-to-happiness ratios among the cities Zoocasa examined.
Edmonton's comparatively affordable housing doesn't translate into a correspondingly high position in the happiness ranking, and Leger's city results don't identify which specific factors explain the score.
Fewer people are getting less happy
Nationally, 23 per cent of Canadians said their happiness deteriorated over the past year, down from 28 per cent in 2025.
Fifty-two per cent said it stayed stable. Twenty-five per cent reported an improvement.
Canada and the United States came out nearly identical
Leger expanded the index to the United States for the first time in 2026. Americans recorded an average happiness score of 70.0, nearly matching Canada's 70.5.
Americans were somewhat more likely to report that their happiness improved, at 29 per cent compared with 25 per cent of Canadians. They were also more likely to say it deteriorated, at 26 per cent compared with 23 per cent in Canada.
What the index measures
The index measures how residents rate their own happiness. It isn't an independent assessment of municipal services, affordability, crime, infrastructure or overall quality of life.
How the survey worked
Leger surveyed 63,710 Canadians aged 18 and over between June 9 and 29, 2026, online through its LEO panel.
Respondents rated their happiness on a scale of one to ten, converted into a standardized score out of 100. Results were weighted by gender, age and region to reflect the population.
The questions about what contributes to happiness and what puts it under pressure came from separate omnibus surveys of 1,528 Canadians and 1,015 Americans. Those questions were not used to calculate the city rankings.
As a non-probability web panel, the index doesn't carry a conventional margin of error. Leger notes a probability sample of comparable size would have a maximum margin of about 0.33 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
The full ranking is on Leger's website.
Sources
Happiness Index 2026: Happiness Is Up Across Canada — Leger
Leger Happiness Index 2025
Price per happiness point calculation by Zoocasa, using 2025 Leger data and CREA figures.
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